Postdoctoral researcher in autonomous inland shipping

You will assist in the coordination of various research projects at the Intelligent Mobile Platform (IMP) research group at  KU Leuven within the domain of autonomous inland shipping. This dynamic and young research group is expending rapidly within an emerging new domain with tremendous challenges at various levels (ship design, drive train, control, communication, ...). Expertise in the domain of marine engineering/design is a big asset but not essential. Profound knowledge of software design in C/C++ or Python is however essential. 

The chosen candidate will need to take the lead in:

• The development of an open software platform for the control of autonomous inland vessel (in collaboration with the other researchers).
• The development and maintenance of a state-of-the-art autonomous scale model vessel to perform experimental validations. 
• You will conduct research in the domain of model based control, maneuvering identification and perception for autonomous inland vessels.
• You will take new initiatives and write new research proposals within the field and follow up and extend the current relations with academic and industrial partners. This includes the organization of research event and a yearly international conference. 
• You will guide various PhD researchers/job students and master's students and you are responsible for the maintenance and coordination of our research facilities.

Currently the IMP group has multiple running projects in the domain of autonomous inland shipping where you will be involved:

• Automation of a catamaran (Maverick) that will be used within multiple projects (AVATAR, IW-NET, ICON).
• Development of a sensor box (hardware-software) to enable flexible and mobile perception on a a vessel (AVATAR, IW-NET, ICON).
• Performing validation experiment of the developed technologies (AVATAR, IW-NET, ICON).

You will be encouraged to extend the scope of our research group towards other relevant inland waterway transport technologies (drive train, remote control, ship design, ...) depending on your interests and ambitions.