TEES Research Engineer I - Teamed Autonomy

Job Title

TEES Research Engineer I - Teamed Autonomy

Agency

Texas A&M Engineering

Department

Bush Combat Development Complex

Proposed Minimum Salary

Commensurate

Job Location

College Station, Texas

Job Type

Staff

Job Description

The George H.W. Bush Combat Development Complex (BCDC) and Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) invites applications for a full-time Research Engineer in the focus area of multi-agent teamed autonomy for air and ground vehicles. The successful applicant will work with subject matter experts, fellow research engineers, and students to develop, augment and integrate novel algorithms and tool sets in the spaces of perception, localization, navigation, sensor/data fusion and inter-vehicle communications.

Researchers at BCDC are investigating air-ground cooperative autonomy to extend the sensing capabilities and leverage heterogeneous fleet resources. This research aids in the understanding and development of methods and technologies that advance future unmanned air, ground and maritime vehicle systems operating in unstructured environments. The goal is to help facilitate effective intelligent vehicle interactions with service members to foster the trust essential to forming efficient teams. Successful, intelligent vehicles will increase unit capabilities, situational awareness, mobility, and speed of action. The research team regularly demonstrates the developing technologies that enable coordinated movement, via shared situational awareness with our heterogeneous multi-vehicle fleet in the diverse off-road terrain at the RELLIS campus.

The BCDC - located on the 2,000-acre RELLIS Campus in Bryan, TX - is an ecosystem for agile technology development and service-member-inspired research. The BCDC is the result of a partnership between the U.S. Army Futures Command and The Texas A&M University System, TEES and the State of Texas. The $200 million complex is designed to bring together researchers from U.S. universities, the military and the private sector for collaboration, demonstrations, and high-tech testing of initiatives to help accelerate military innovation for our nation’s defense.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborates with faculty, research engineers and stakeholders to identify end-user requirements and specifications
• Designs and implements algorithms and accompanying documentation to augment autonomous vehicle behaviors
• Produces efficient code subject to computational resources to function in real-time systems
• Tests and deploys programs, applications, and ROS nodes in simulation and on hardware platforms
• Troubleshoots, debugs, maintains, and improves existing software and algorithms
• Develops technical documentation to aid future project developments
• Performs system hardware integration and tuning to support field-testing needs
• Designs real-world experiments and corresponding metrics to test capability enhancements of complex multi-agent systems
• Participates in demonstrations to stakeholders, reviews and evaluates results, and establishes conclusions based on capability performance.
• Generates system requirements based on field testing and demonstration results
• Participates in technical reports and presentations and presents results of research projects to internal and external stakeholders.
• Participates in team research activities.
• Other duties as assigned.

Required Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Required Experience:

• No experience

Preferred Education:

• Master’s degree in (Mechanical, Electrical, Computer) Engineering or related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Preferred Experience:

• Experience with software development in Python, and C++.
• Experience working in Linux operating systems environments
• Experience with ROS/ROS2 programming and related practices
• Familiarity with hardware integration to compose complex systems-of-systems (SoS)
• Familiar with computer networking to conduct systems integration and field-testing.
• Relevant understanding of autonomous vehicle subsystems (perception, localization, navigation, etc.), and corresponding algorithm implementations (e.g., YOLO, SLAM, RRT, etc.)
• Experience in software development projects for applied research
• Experience with Docker containerization.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to convey technical information clearly and effectively through informal and formal documents, reports, and presentations to senior management.
• Strong technical writing skills.
• Highly collaborative and able to work in a team-based environment.
• Familiarity with principles of Agile project management and technology development.

All positions are security-sensitive. Applicants are subject to a criminal history investigation, and employment is contingent upon the institution’s verification of credentials and/or other information required by the institution’s procedures, including the completion of the criminal history check.

Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action/Veterans/Disability Employer committed to diversity.