PhD position in the domain of “Resilient Robotic Autonomy for Underwater Operations in Fish Farms”

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For a position as a PhD Candidate, the goal is a completed doctoral education up to an obtained doctoral degree.  

The PhD candidate will work on the challenging research problem of resilient autonomy in underwater robot operations in the domain of aquaculture. In particular, the envisioned research relates to the problem of robust underwater perception for localization and mapping in visually-degraded and dynamic fish farm environments. The activity will be part of the «ResiFarm: Resilient Robotic Autonomy for Underwater Operations in Fish Farms» project funded by the Research Council of Norway. SINTEF is the project owner. 

The research will be conducted at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics of NTNU in collaboration with SINTEF Ocean’s Aquaculture technology department. Underwater robotic systems such as the Argus Mini ROV of SINTEF ACE and the Eelume robot will be provided as platforms for field trials and demonstrations in the Flume Tank and SINTEF ACE facilities of SINTEF Ocean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU6XERNfMkA&t=64s & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFk1DcmvxOQ&t=24s

The position is part of the Autonomous Robots Lab activities in resilient robotic autonomy across diverse operational conditions. The Autonomous Robots Lab has leading research in robotic autonomy and demonstrated performance in a collection of world-class projects funded by both European and US sources. For more details about our team, see https://www.autonomousrobotslab.com/ . Indicative instances of our work can be seen in the following videos of our robotic experimentation: https://youtu.be/P3uT4gHEFHw & https://youtu.be/SNMsKAnCQkw  

The candidate will be provided with a main academic supervisor from NTNU Department of Engineering Cybernetics, and a scientific co-supervisor from SINTEF Ocean.

The position reports to Professor Kostas Alexis as the main scientific supervisor of the research.