Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology

Location: Lincoln
Salary: From £36,333 per annum
Please note, this post is fixed term for 24 months, and full time at 1.0 FTE.
Closing Date: Wednesday 19 April 2023
Interview Date: Thursday 04 May 2023
Reference: COS971

We are looking to recruit a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with a research profile in robotic perception to join our agri-robotics research team.

The University of Lincoln robotics team is working on a large project with the agri-robotics industry, towards the open development platform for robotic crop harvesting. The platform will facilitate open and standardised access to the core software and hardware components providing key functionality such as autonomy, safety or perception enabling rapid adoption by the industry and academia. The core functionality will enable further development and customisation which can be privately exploited by the industry, leading to faster adoption of more reliable robotic technology in agriculture. Such a strategy will lead to step changes in farming productivity and help to alleviate global problems with the availability of a workforce in the sector. In this project, the principle will be demonstrated by developing commercial robotic systems for tomato and strawberry harvesting.

One of the key components of the platform is robotic perception enabling key harvesting and crop quality assurance tasks. The academic focus will be on real-time 3d scene reconstruction techniques, occlusion handling and semantic scene understanding of dynamic and complex agricultural environments featuring plants and farm infrastructure. For that purpose, we are looking to recruit a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with relevant experience and/or a keen interest in a number of research areas, including (but not exclusively):

• multi-view 3d reconstruction;
• active vision;
• semantic segmentation and scene understanding;
• object detection and localisation in 3D;
• computer vision for robotics.

Applicants should have or expect to soon obtain, a PhD in a relevant area. You must have excellent mathematical and coding skills (C++/Python, ROS).

This opportunity allows you to engage in international collaboration within an ambitious team, to work with state-of-the-art robotic hardware and software, and to benefit from excellent support to produce and disseminate original research contributions in the leading international conferences and journals. You will have access to state-of-the-art research farms equipped with industrial standard production facilities, as well as agricultural robots with advanced sensors and tools.

You will also contribute to the University's ambition to achieve international recognition as a research-intensive institution and will be expected to design, conduct and manage original research in the above subject areas as well contribute to the wider activities of the agri-robotics team. Evidence of authorship of research outputs of international standing is essential, as is the ability to work collaboratively as part of a team, including excellent written and spoken communication skills. Opportunities to mentor and co-supervise PhD students working in the project team will also be available to outstanding candidates.

This is a full-time post, fixed-term for 24 months initially, with excellent opportunities for ongoing career development and progression. Informal enquiries about the post can be made to Dr Grzegorz Cielniak (email: gcielniak@lincoln.ac.uk).

As an institutional Athena SWAN Bronze Award holder we are committed to advancing gender equality in STEM, therefore female applicants are strongly encouraged to apply.