Research Associate position in Energy-Aware Swarm Programming

We are recruiting a Research Associate for Horizon Europe project OpenSwarm.

Swarm of Kilobots

Job title: Research Associate in Energy-Aware Swarm Programming
Contract type: Fixed-term for 32 months
Salary: 36,333 GBP to 44,414 GBP per annum
Closing date: 23rd April 2023

We are seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Researcher (Research Associate) to engage in groundbreaking research on energy-aware programming of robot swarms. You will build novel design tools enabling swarms of low-power devices to collaborate long-term and meet formal specifications while coping with severe resource constraints and changing environments.

The role sits within the new Horizon Europe project, OpenSwarm, coordinated by the Inria Paris Research Centre. This is an exciting collaboration that brings together internationally leading partners from academia and industry. Energy-aware swarm programming will be demonstrated on our 1,000-robot platform in Sheffield, and in the context of real-world use cases in application domains including ocean noise pollution monitoring, supporting human workers in forest environments, and moving networks of ICE trains.

Applicants should have a PhD (or near completion) in robotics, computer science, or related fields. You will work with a high degree of autonomy alongside a large team. You need a keen passion to work across disciplinary boundaries such as formal methods, swarm robotics or multi-robot systems, machine learning or optimisation, and software development. You will also contribute to coordinating scientific workshops and outreach events.

The post is based in the Natural Robotics Lab (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/naturalrobotics) led by Dr Roderich Gross, which is part of both Sheffield Robotics and the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering.

The preferred start date is September 2023. Applicants with later start dates are still encouraged to apply.

We’re one of the best not-for-profit organisations to work for in the UK. The University’s Total Reward Package includes a competitive salary, a generous Pension Scheme and annual leave entitlement, as well as access to a range of learning and development courses to support your personal and professional development.

We build teams of people from different heritages and lifestyles from across the world, whose talent and contributions complement each other to greatest effect. We believe diversity in all its forms delivers greater impact through research, teaching and student experience.

Further information about this job (Job Reference Number: UOS036604):
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/jobs

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Natural Robotics Lab: investigating robotic systems inspired by nature, and robotic models of natural systems.

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