The Chair of Information-oriented Control (ITR) is seeking for a PhD candidate or PostDoc in "Learning for control" with primary application to underwater robotics. The successful candidate will participate in the research project "Search, Identification and Collection of Marine Litter with Autonomous Robots" (SeaClear) and the follow-up project SeaClear 2.0 supported by the EU Horizon2020 program, working on full-body control of an unmanned underwater vehicle and grasping.

Project description:

Today’s oceans contain 26-66 million tons of waste, with approximately 94% located on the seafloor. So far, collection efforts have focused mostly on surface waste, with only a few local efforts to gather underwater waste, always using human divers. No solution exists that exploits autonomous robots for underwater litter collection; the SeaClear project will develop the first. We will create a mixed team of Unmanned Underwater, Surface, and Aerial Vehicles — UUV, USV, UAV — to find and collect litter from the seabed and from the water column, focusing on coastal areas since that is where waste inflow concentrates. The UAV and one or several inspection UUVs map the litter, aiming to establish correlations between surface and underwater litter. One or multiple collection UUVs then classify and collect litter, using a combined suction-gripper manipulator for both small and large waste. The UUVs are tethered to offload power and computation to the USV. Our objective is to operate the robots autonomously, without remote human intervention, and to that end we plan novel developments in debris mapping, classification, and robot control. For more information on the project, check out: www.seaclear-project.eu

Your qualifications:

A successful degree (master/ diploma/doctoral/PhD) with exceptional records is required. For this project, we are seeking a motivated and talented researcher with strong disciplinary background in

• control, machine learning and mechatronics
• a strong interest to work in an interdisciplinary environment
• good knowledge in robotics and optimization
• strong software development skills
• exposure to hydrodynamics is beneficial, but not crucial 

Candidates should have very good English language skills, knowledge of German is not mandatory.

About us:

At the Chair of Information-Oriented Control we focus on research and teaching of control and optimization of cooperative, networked, and distributed dynamical systems. We develop novel methods and tools for the analysis and control of such systems, taking particularly into account model uncertainties as well as limitations pertaining to acquisition of data, communication, and computation. We apply our methods mainly to human-robot-teams, haptic assistance, cyber-physical systems, and infrastructure systems. While our core competence is control engineering and robotics, we have some interdisciplinary collaborations with the fields of psychology (in human-robot interaction) and communications (in networked control systems). Many of the developed methods are experimentally validated in our multi-robot lab.

Our offer:

We offer a full-time position as academic staff with the opportunity to pursue a doctoral degree. Payment will be based on the Collective Agreement for the Civil Service of the Länder (TV-L E13). TUM strives to raise the proportion of women in its workforce and explicitly encourages applications from qualified women. Applications from disabled persons with essentially the same qualifications will be given preference.

Your application:

If you are interested in working in our team, please send your application with a motivation letter, your complete CV, grades, relevant certificates, and some of your publications in a single pdf file to applications.itr@ei.tum.de .

Do not hesitate to contact Ulrike Scholze for any questions you may have (+49.89.289 25723)

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