PhD Scholarship Programme: Experience - and model - based Grasp Synthesis and Manipulation - Vicente López

Eurecat Robotics and Automation unit holds more than 15 years of experience and works in both private industrial contracts and publicly funded research projects at a national and international level. Eurecat Robotics and Automation unit carries out Applied R&D in the field of industrial and service robotics such as advanced applications, industrial perception, robotics collaboration and manipulation, ground and aerial robots and cognitive robotics. Our main goal is to help our clients and partners to innovate by seeking together the best technological solution, 100% adapted to their needs, efficient, ethical, and ready to go.

The Robotics and Automation Unit at Eurecat Technology Center in partnership with the UPC University offers a PhD Fellowship starting in 2022.

We are looking for a highly motivated researcher to work on including AI techniques in robot grasping and manipulation. The candidate will work mainly for the Intelliman project. The thesis will explore, particularly: a) the inclusion of reasoning techniques in the grasp synthesis process to increase the robot autonomy by making it able to adapt to different situations and recover from failures; b) the embedding of learning-based motion-planning methods within classical task-and-motion planning approaches for manipulation to increase the efficiency. Also, the balance of on-board vs off-board processes will be explored to achieve high performance planning, and robust execution frameworks will be proposed with fast re-planning capabilities for the adaptation to changing scenarios or unforeseen situations. Both physics-based models and machine learning techniques will be explored to devise algorithms for slipping avoidance and in-hand manipulation based on vision/force/tactile sensing with both parallel and multi-fingered grippers. These two control modalities aim at controlling the grasp force in a coordinated way with external aids, such as gravity or contacts with the environment, to enhance dexterity without increasing the number of degrees of freedom of the robotic system.

Functions and Responsibilities:

The research will focus on the scientific contribution and technological developments including: 

• Artificial Intelligence
• Robot Manipulation and Grasping
• Develop, validate, and maintain code
• Lead, plan and execute demonstrations
• Participate and lead scientific publications
• Provide R&D support to the other colleagues
• Conducting the research, write drafts of scientific papers, and deliver a PhD thesis

Besides, it is a great opportunity to apply robotics research to real applications working in National or Horizon Europe research projects or hand by hand with our customers in several of our private contracts with industry.