Postdoctoral Research Associate in Underwater Computational imaging

• Join a world-leading research hub developing intelligent robotic systems for inspection and asset management
• Develop novel imaging technologies to allow robots to see robustly and efficiently in a broad range of challenging conditions
• Full time, 3 year fixed term position, Level A with base Salary $97,043 - $107,516 + 17% superannuation

• POSTED: April 15, 2023
• CLOSES: Closed
• LOCATION: Sydney, Australia
• POSITION: Full-time
• ORGANISATION: University of Sydney
• SUPERVISOR: Dr. Donald Dansereau

About the opportunity

We are seeking an ambitious and talented Postdoctoral Research Associate to undertake fundamental and applied research related to the development, design and deployment of novel imaging technologies for an autonomous underwater robot. As part of the Australian Robotic Inspection and Management Research Hub (ARIAM), this position involves working closely with Hub Industry Partner Advanced Navigation on their prototype Hydrus Autonomous Underwater Vehicle platform. The research will focus on the combined design and interpretation of camera and sonar imaging systems using computational imaging techniques to enable greater performance in challenging underwater conditions.

This robotic sensing-focused position will advance the imaging and sensing technologies required for autonomous underwater survey. Challenges arise from environmental conditions including murky water, bubbles, debris, low light, and complex underwater acoustic propagation and interference. Additional constraints arise in power, size, compute, and latency associated with real-time robotic navigation and mapping.

Depending on ability and interest, candidate approaches can include combining inverse rendering and novel representations, physics-based sensor and propagation models, high-fidelity noise and interference models, and computational imaging approaches to adaptive insonification, exposure coding and coded blur. This project will offer dramatic improvements in sensing robustness and performance, and geometric and textural accuracy in autonomous underwater asset inspection.

In this role you will:

• work closely with a team of project academics, engineers, and PhD students
• develop and characterise novel sensing strategies through simulation, lab experiments, and field trials
• develop low-level vision algorithms that best make use of sensing in the context of the full autonomy pipeline
• contribute to the ARIAM Hub’s demonstrator program that will showcase your research and that of other Hub projects
• contribute as a researcher to project report preparation, presentation at internal workshops, and dissemination at top international conferences and journals.

About Us

ARIAM Hub is a collaboration between leading academic researchers and experts from the Australian robotics industry supported by the Australian Research Council to deliver research excellence in robotics for asset management. ARIAM spans 3 leading Australian universities: The University of Sydney, QUT and ANU. This position will be supervised by Dr Donald Dansereau, lead of the Robotic Imaging Lab within the Australian Centre for Robotics (ACFR) at the University of Sydney. The ACFR is one of Australia’s leading robotics research groups, and the Robotic Imaging Lab is focused on endowing machines with new ways of seeing the world. From photons to actions, we employ computational imaging techniques to jointly consider the optics, low-level vision, and high-level semantic understanding that ultimately drive autonomous decision making. In this role you will work as part of the ARIAM team and collaborate across multiple groups across the Hub.

About you

The University values courage and creativity; openness and engagement; inclusion and diversity; and respect and integrity. As such, we see the importance of recruiting talent aligned to these values. We are seeking excellent candidates for a Postdoctoral Research Associate who has:

• a PhD (or near completion) in a relevant field
• knowledge of one or more of optical and acoustic devices and imaging, low-level image processing, and computer vision
• a desire to expand autonomous underwater sensing capabilities using techniques from computational imaging
• experience with one or more programming languages (C, C++, C#, Python, Matlab)
• proven ability to conduct high quality research, evidenced by peer-reviewed publications
• an ability to coordinate multiple project objectives to meet established targets and deadlines
• excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Desired but not essential:

• hands-on experience with robotic platforms, ROS, and/or deep learning frameworks (Tensorflow and others), OpenCV, and video for linux,
• a history of research excellence evidenced by prizes or awards, relative to experience.

How to apply

Applications (including a cover letter, CV, and any additional supporting documentation) can be submitted via the Apply button at the top of the page or below and you will be redirected to the University of Sydney’s website with the full position listing. 

Additional submission requirements:

When applying for this role, please include a Google Drive link to a 2-minute selfie video covering the following:

• Your strongest engineering skills
• What you enjoy most about research
• A description of a project that you’re proud of, or plan to be when completed

Click to view the Position Description for this role.