Our team and mission

The Automation and Robotics Section located at ESTEC, the technical heart of ESA, has three labs with corresponding work groups: Orbital Robotics/GNC, Planetary Robotics and Human-Robot Interaction. This Fellowship is for the Planetary Robotics Lab (PRL) but may also involve the Human-Robot Interaction lab.
The labs also conduct field tests that deploy the lab platforms in terrestrial analogues of planetary environments (typically deserts).

You will join a team of mechanical, electrical, control and software engineers. Our equipment consists of specialised software for analysis and commercial industrial components, as well as in-house developed and integrated systems or subsystems such as rover platforms and/or robotic manipulators. Our goal is to validate concepts, methods, hardware and software to implement technologies that support planetary exploration with building blocks that enhance a probe’s locomotion and navigation capabilities.

In the period of the Fellowship, the lab will be supporting Mars exploration missions such as the Rosalind Franklin Rover Mission (RFM) and the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Mission Campaign. Potential Lunar missions, currently in their study phase, will also be assessed. In these, robotics will play a key role in fulfilling the objectives of prospecting and ISRU, as well as the deployment, assembly and construction of instrumentation and infrastructure.

You are encouraged to visit the ESA website: https://www.esa.int/

Field(s) of activity/research for the traineeship

Robotics, control, computer science, computer vision, machine learning and AI, remote operations, human-robot interaction and mechatronics.

You will develop, in collaboration with the Section’s staff, highly autonomous, yet interactive end-to-end robotics systems that will make high-yield planetary exploration and exploitation missions possible.

Your research will leverage on concepts such as autonomous navigation, global localisation, task learning, object and environment classification and autonomous grasping.

Your research will involve the use of the Section’s rovers, robots and aerial platforms and will produce a working end-to-end robotics system which will be demonstrated in a field test.

To gain exposure to the reality of space missions, you will also support the Section staff in review activities of existing ESA projects in the planetary realm.

Technical competencies

Behavioural competencies

Result Orientation
Operational Efficiency
Fostering Cooperation
Relationship Management
Continuous Improvement
Forward Thinking 

Education

Applicants should have recently completed or be close to completing a PhD in computer science, GNC or robotics. Preference will be given to candidates who have received their doctorate within the past five years.

Additional requirements

Experience in the design, implementation and deployment of autonomous robotic systems with a focus on navigation and manipulation tasks.
Programming in C++ is required. Experience with other programming and scripting languages would be considered an asset.
Experience with CD/CI tools in software development projects would be considered an asset.
Experience with data-driven models in software engineering would be considered an asset.