# Research Engineer Position, Robotic Arm Control & Simulation, University of Potsdam

Conditional on the final funding decision by the funding body, applications are invited from suitably qualified candidates for a nine-month research engineer position starting as soon as possible (not later than February 2022) with the "Computational Linguistics Lab Potsdam (colabPotsdam)" (headed by Prof. David Schlangen) at the University of Potsdam, Germany. The positions is 40 hours of work per week (100%). The salary is determined by the collective bargaining agreement for public employees in Germany (TV-L 13 Ost). The duration of the contract is for nine month (in accordance with Section 2 subsection 1 of the German Academic Fixed-Term Contract Law (WissZeitVG)).

## Job description

The position will be part of an upcoming research project on enabling industrial robots working together with humans (cobots) to use spoken conversations to learn new collaborative task. The goal is to build upon a robotic system which has basic capabilities of grasping and manipulating objects and extend it with the possibility of learning new and advanced tasks from spoken instructions as well as visual reference resolution. As a research engineer, your responsibility is to set up the framework for the robotic arm controller, both in simulation and, in cooperation with the industrial partner Synergetion GmbH, in the lab environment. The control of the robot arm will be implemented using ROS and the Open Source software Webots will be used for the 3D simulations.

### Requirements

* A Master's or PhD degree in Computer Science, Robotics or related fields (defended by start of contract) * Experience with ROS or ROS2 * Experience with a simulation software, ideally Webots * Strong programming skills in Python * Proficiency in working with git * The working language of the group is English. Very good spoken and written command of English is required.

Experience in one or more of the following fields / technologies is desirable: robot programming, C++, computer vision, CAD-Software, 3D modelling, robot arms, industrial robots.

## The place

The beautiful city of Potsdam is surrounded by rivers and lakes and supports a wide variety of recreational activities. It is part of the Berlin metropolitan area, one of the cultural and scientific capitals of the world. The city of Berlin is within commuting distance, and many researchers and students choose to live there. The region offers a high quality of urban life at comparatively still modest costs.

Handicapped applicants will be given preference in case of equal suitability. The University of Potsdam strives to increase the proportion of women in research and teaching and specifically encourages female applicants to apply for this position.

## Applications

Deadline: The position remains open until filled with a suitable candidate

To apply, send the following documents as a single PDF:

* Statement of interests that motivates your application * Curriculum vitae * If available, coding samples or links to your contributions to public code repositories * Scans of transcripts and academic degree certificates * The names, affiliations, and contact details of up to three people who can provide reference letters for you.

Address for applications and queries: d*************n@uni-potsdam.de