Robotic perception engineer

The Inria centre at Université Côte d'Azur includes 42 research teams and 9 support services. The centre's staff (about 500 people) is made up of scientists of different nationalities, engineers, technicians and administrative staff. The teams are mainly located on the university campuses of Sophia Antipolis and Nice as well as Montpellier, in close collaboration with research and higher education laboratories and establishments (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, INRAE, INSERM ...), but also with the regiona economic players.

With a presence in the fields of computational neuroscience and biology, data science and modeling, software engineering and certification, as well as collaborative robotics, the Inria Centre at Université Côte d'Azur  is a major player in terms of scientific excellence through its results and collaborations at both European and international levels.

The ACENTAURI research team (https://team.inria.fr/acentauri/), located in the Inria Center of the Côte d'Azur University in Sophia-Antipolis, is offering different robotics engineer positions working in a team for the coming years.

ACENTAURI is a robotics team that studies and develops autonomous and intelligent robots that collaborate with each other to perform difficult tasks in complex and dynamic environments.

The team addresses perception, decision and control problems for multi-robot collaboration by proposing an original hybrid approach to artificial intelligence based on models and data and by studying efficient algorithms. The team focuses on applications such as multi-robot patrol systems for environmental monitoring and transporting people and goods. In these applications, several robots share multi-sensor information possibly coming from the infrastructure.

The effectiveness of the proposed approaches is demonstrated on real robotic systems such as cars and drones in collaboration with industrial partners.

Within the Framework of the European project Agrifood-TEF (01/01/2023-31/12/2028), INRIA-ACENTAURI is working to set up a Living Lab (Mobile Laboratory) in order to deliver on site services for SMEs or farmers. The project is organized with different national nodes and satellites. Inria belongs to the french national node.

The first two years of the project will focus on the setup of the system and services, while the three remaining years will be used to provide and maintain services.

The Living Lab will contain a multi-robot platform composed of aerial drones and autonomous ground robots that communicates with each other. All the robots will be equipped with dedicated sensors for navigation and for the dedicated uses cases of SMEs or farmers.

The complete system will be able to:

• Register and georeference cameras data, Lidar data, and specific sensors data
• Perform mapping of the environment
• Monitor the progress of the task from the Living Lab
• Process data in the living Lab using AI based techniques (Model based, Data based and Hybrid based)

INRIA Acentauri is looking to setup a team of engineers in this aim. 

As a whole, the team will have to cover a wide area of requirements :

• Robotic hardware and software integration and validation (robots and sensors)
• Autonomy in energy (charging, recharging and monitoring) (robots and living Lab)
• Environment representation (3D Mapping)
• Localization, Planning and control of robots (AGV and UAV)
• Georeferencing and timestamping of datasets (RTK-GPS, Cameras, Lidar, ....)
• Communication (Wifi, 5G, 802.11, ...)
• IHM and monitoring
• Cybersecurity and network management
• Mechanical design and prototyping (3D printing)
• Project and services management (reporting, meetings, planning, scheduling)
• Car driver licence
• UAV control (Telepilot)

Travel: Travel is expected for system development, data acquisition and on site services.

The missions entrusted to the engineer will mainly be the following:

• Develop mapping, localization and control algorithms (LIDAR SLAM, Visual SLAM)

• Performances comparison of perception algorithms for navigation (mapping, localization, slam)

• Develop the services offered (protocol, metrics, datasets, etc.)

• Adapt services to user needs
• Realize the services for the project customer

• Support for experiments

• Setting up demonstrations

• Report and documentation

   

[1] Open-ROX is a software suite developed in the ACENTAURI team

Collaboration : The candidate will therefore work in close collaboration with the Agrifood-TEF engineers team, doctoral students and post-docs of the team.

Responsibilities: The candidate will have to integrate into the ACENTAURI engineering team and participate in the animation of the projects. In addition, he (she) will have to perform the important tasks of communication, report writing, and methodology implemented in ACENTAURI (project monitoring and project management under Git and Gitlab). He (she) will have the responsibility for mobility services (mapping, localization, slam, etc.)

• Analyze the users needs
• Propose solutions
• Integrate and Develop programs/ applications/ interfaces
• Test and evaluate on DATASETS and in real condition
• Design experimental platforms
• Write documentation

Complementary activities:

• Write the reports
• Write meeting minutes
• Test, modify until validated

Technical skills and level required:

The candidate should preferably have obtained a PhD in Robotics perception or an engineering degree with an already proved experience (at least 3 years). The candidate must have a solid foundation in software development (Matlab, C/C++, Python, Git, OpenCL, CMAKE, ROS1, ROS2, ...). He must have knowledge in programming of machine learning methods (learning and inference) and GPU programming will be highly appreciated.

Languages:

a good level in English read/written/spoken is expected.

Interpersonal skills:

The candidate will be in contact with the members of the team and will have to integrate into the ACENTAURI engineering team. He/she must have the appropriate relational qualities.

Additional skills appreciated:

The car driven licence is mandatory. The drone remote control licence is a plus, if necessary this licence will have to be passed within the first three months of the contract.

He/she must also be highly motivated for multidisciplinary studies and all aspects of R&D ranging from fundamental to experimental work.

• 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
• Contribution to mutual insurance (subject to conditions)

From 2692 € gross monthly (according to degree and experience)