Post-Doctoral Research Visit F/M Drone-based adapted agricultural data collection in rural environment.

The  Inria University of Lille centre, created in 2008, employs 360 people  including 305 scientists in 15 research teams. Recognised for its strong  involvement in the socio-economic development of the Hauts-De-France  region, the Inria University of Lille centre pursues a close  relationship with large companies and SMEs. By promoting synergies  between researchers and industrialists, Inria participates in the  transfer of skills and expertise in digital technologies and provides  access to the best European and international research for the benefit  of innovation and companies, particularly in the region.For more  than 10 years, the Inria University of Lille centre has been located at  the heart of Lille's university and scientific ecosystem, as well as at  the heart of Frenchtech, with a technology showroom based on Avenue de  Bretagne in Lille, on the EuraTechnologies site of economic excellence  dedicated to information and communication technologies (ICT).

Every year Inria International Relations Department has a few postdoctoral positions  in order to support Inria international collaborations.
The postdoctoral contract will have a duration of 12 to 24 months. The default start date is November 1st, 2024 and not later than January, 1st 2025. The postdoctoral fellow will be recruited by one of the   Inria Centres in France but it is recommended that the time is shared between France and the partner’s country (please note that the postdoctoral fellow has to start his/her contract being in France and that the visits have to respect Inria rules for missions).

In 2024, six postdoctoral positions have been allocated for this purpose, to be selected among the following institutional collaborations and priorities:
Inria Brasil, Inria Chile, Inria CWI (The Netherlands), Inria ECDF (Germany), Inria London, Inria@Africa (selected partner universities in Benin, Cameroon, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa), University of Waterloo (Canada) and partner institutions in South Korea.

This job offer is related to the Inria@Africa project: The Inria International Laboratory for Research in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (LIRIMA), created at the end of 2009 by Inria and seven other institutions in sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, is the result of close collaboration between researchers at Inria and research institutions in these countries.

The AgriNet project is a long lasting collaboration Inria and University of Stellenbosch (South Africa). It aims to design and deploy a full wireless sensor network based system to sense, collect and assist potatoe and vineyard production. The system will be composed of a smart wireless sensor network to sense and collect efficiently the data. In rural remote regions, even with such a distributed wireless sensor networks, when the network is too sparse, there might have no end-to-end connectivity between the sensors and the central entity that needs to process data. An alternative way to collect data is thus to collect them from the air with the support of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles).    

This project aims to investigate a new generation of data collection, combining intelligent wireless sensors and aerial means, and test this approach in agriculture in the framework of AgriNet. The main objective is to use unmanned aerial vehicles (commonly called "drone") as data mules to collect data from connected objects on the ground, in natural environments. This aerial solution will facilitate collections in hard-to-access natural environments, which can also suffer from signal attenuation with traditional communication networks. In this context, drones offer a large geographical zone of intervention, and are easier to deploy than land-based mobile vectors (e.g. ground vehicles). Compared to traditional sensor networks, this approach greatly lightens the hardware infrastructure to deploy, by avoiding the installation of numerous gateways to route information from the sensor nodes; gateways are expensive, energy intensive and require regular maintenance, which is incompatible with their presence in an uneasily accessible natural environment.

In some cases, it is not possible for the drone to visit each terrestrial node, either for ground typology, energy efficiency (at the drone or at the ground wireless network level) or because of unexpected events?

The main objective of this project will be to design a dynamic multi hop data routing transmission able to dynamically convey data through the terrestrial sensor nodes towards a specific sink node that will be visited by the drone. This routing must take into consideration hardware and energy constraints by integrating for instance the capacity of the path to reduce data amount and be flexible enough to determine the best appropriate sink node.

This work will be conducted jointly with the Inria FUN group and two departments of the Stellenbosch University. All together these partners provide expertise in networking, data analysis and agriculture knowledge. The results of this work will then be implemented and run in a trial.

Within the AgriNet project, the candidate will be in charge in the design and implementation of the drone-based adapted agricultural data collection for rural environment. He/she will participate to the AgriNet project dynamic and will help make the collaboration even stronger with visits to Stellenbosch and monitoring of milestones. He/She will also have to participate to the FUN team life.    

Candidates for postdoctoral positions are recruited after the end of their Ph.D. or after a first post-doctoral period: for the candidates who obtained their PhD in the Northern hemisphere, the date of the Ph.D. defense shall be later than September 1, 2022; in the Southern hemisphere, later than April 1, 2022.
In order to encourage mobility, the postdoctoral position must take place in a scientific environment that is truly different from the one of the Ph.D. (and, if applicable, from the position held since the Ph.D.); particular attention is thus paid to French or international candidates who obtained their doctorate abroad.

The Agrinet project already designed the architecture of the WSN deployment and validate the main wireless technology to be used. First in-situ validation tests have been performed to assess these elements [3]. Wireless multi technology multi hop routing protocols have been designed [1], experimentally validated and enhanced with a data reduction approach [2].

The candidate will work jointly with the agronomy department of  Stellenbosch University and the Inria team  in France in order to learn about specificities of each crop that could be exploited. Collaborations could be extended with INRAe and the Sencrop company with which the FUN team collaborate. the All results will be validated experimentally, first on our lab testbed and then in real fields, both teams owning drones and wireless devices. 

Timeline:

T0-T3: Review of adequate combined adapted routing and drone-assisted data collection  

T4-T12: Investigation of a dynamic collect point selection integrating specificities of agricultural data

T0-T12: Handling of hardware and software already developed in both teams (parallel task)

             Visit to Stellenbosch

T12-T18: Integration of dynamic collect point selection in a dynamic path planning approach for drones.

T18 – T24 : Implementation and validation  

             Visit to Stellenbocsh

[1] Foubert, B; Mitton, N. RODENT: a flexible TOPSIS based routing protocol for multi-technology devices in wireless sensor networks ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies, 2021, 2 (1)

[2] Chained estimation for data reduction-driven routing in wireless sensor networks Brandon Foubert, Christian Salim, Nathalie Mitton WiMob 2023 - 19th International Workshop on Selected Topics in Wireless and Mobile computing, Jun 2023, Montreal, Canada

[3] An Ad-Hoc Sensor Network for Vineyard Monitoring Nicholas Nell, Nathalie Mitton, Thomas Niesler, Riaan Wolhuter Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC), Nov 2021, Spier, South Africa

We are looking for a candidate that has a PhD in computer science who is creative in proposing solution solutions and capable of critical analysis of results. We demand the candidate:

• 1) to be curious and interested in new technologies
• 2) to have excellent skills in scripting and programming (e.g., python, C/C++, Java, ROS)
• 3) to have a strong background in mobile networks, Wireless and Mobile Networks.
• 4) to be fluent in spoken and written English with strong communication and presentation skills.
• 5) to be a pleasant team worker (verbal communication, active listening, motivation and commitment)

• Subsidized meals
• Partial reimbursement of public transport costs
• Leave: 7 weeks of annual leave + 10 extra days off due to RTT (statutory reduction in working hours) + possibility of exceptional leave (sick children, moving home, etc.)
• Possibility of teleworking and flexible organization of working hours
• Professional equipment available (videoconferencing, loan of computer equipment, etc.)
• Social, cultural and sports events and activities
• Access to vocational training
• Social security coverage

Monthly Gross Salary : 2788€ (according to current values)