This post offers an outstanding opportunity to work with a
multidisciplinary team of researchers. Our long-term vision is to create
the first non-biological living system through evolution in the natural
world. The project takes arguably a radical approach: creating living
systems by synthesising their building blocks from scratch. The research
programme will study Evo-bots, which are energy-autonomous mobile robots
/ mechatronic modules. Evo-bots control when to move; however, their
direction of motion is entirely dictated by the environment. By
controlling how Evo-bots physically interact with each other (a process
called self-assembly), the system can give rise to novel forms of life
and its evolution.
The post holder will be working in Dr Roderich Gross' Natural
Robotics
Lab (http://naturalrobotics.group.shef.ac.uk).
The lab is part of the
Sheffield Centre for Robotics (http://www.scentro.ac.uk), which
offers a
brand-new robotics laboratory of ca. 800 sq m.
The position will incur a regular exchange with and visits of Dr
Francesco Mondada's group at EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology), Lausanne, Switzerland. http://mobots.epfl.ch/
Applicants should have a good honours degree, hold, or be near
completion of, a PhD (or equivalent research experience) in a related
discipline such as robotics, mechatronics, electrical engineering,
mechanical engineering, or computer science, and have a track record of
research and publications in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. The
successful applicant will have knowledge in system design, rapid
prototyping, embedded computing, sensors and their processing, actuators
and their control and have good overall IT skills. Previous research
experience in the design, implementation and study of miniature
robotic/mechatronic systems is highly desirable.
The post is fixed-term from 1 June 2013
to 1 August
2014.
Salary in the range: £28,685 to £30,424 per annum
Closing Date: 15th May 2013
The University of Sheffield is committed to achieving excellence
through
inclusion. We are an Athena Bronze SWAN Award winner, a Stonewall
Diversity Champion and a Two Ticks Employer.
To apply, visit https://www.shef.ac.uk/jobs (Job
reference number:
UOS006388). Please note that pop-up windows must not be blocked!
-- Roderich GROSS, PhD SMIEEE
Lecturer and Head of the Natural Robotics Lab
Department of Automatic Control & Systems Engineering
The University of Sheffield
Mappin Street
Sheffield S1 3JD, UK http://www.shef.ac.uk/acse/staff/roderich-gross