Phd Position F/m Sensors-based Control of An Aerial Manipulator for Complex Manipulation of Articulated Objects

Le descriptif de l’offre ci-dessous est en Anglais_

**Type de contrat**: CDD

**Niveau de diplôme exigé**: Thèse ou équivalent

**Fonction**: Post-Doctorant

**A propos du centre ou de la direction fonctionnelle**:
The Inria Centre at Rennes University is one of Inria's eight centres and has more than thirty research teams. The Inria Centre is a major and recognized player in the field of digital sciences. It is at the heart of a rich R&D and innovation ecosystem: highly innovative PMEs, large industrial groups, competitiveness clusters, research and higher education players, laboratories of excellence, technological research institute, etc.

**Contexte et atouts du poste**:

- The work will be carried in English at the Inria Rennes Bretagne Atlantique research center.
- The position is full-time for 1 year. The position will be paid according to the French salary regulations for Post dctoral researchers.
- We do high quality and impactful research in robotics, publishing on the major journals and conferences.
- We often collaborate with other top researchers in europe and worldwide.
- You will have access to a well established laboratory including:

- two flying arenas equipped with motion tracking system, several quadrotors, and a few fully-actuated manipulators,
- one robotic manipulation lab equipped with several robotic arms, like the Franka Emika Panda.
- You will be part of an international and friendly team. We organize several events, from after works, to multi-day lab retreat.
- Regular visits and talks by internationally known researchers from top research labs.

**Mission confiée**:
**Short abstract**:
**Description**:

- over often performed in known/controlled and structured environments (i.e., in ideal lab conditions). Most achieved tasks belong to the family known as push & slide paradigm, which consists in simply touching a wall at different locations with a single point contact end
- effector while controlling the interaction force [1, 2]. Moreover, most works performed such a task in indoor controlled environments where the robot position is measured with accurate motion capture systems (MOCAPs) and the environment is perfectly known [3].
- This project aims at pioneering this still mostly unexplored domain, pushing further the boundaries of Aerial Physical Interaction (APhI). In contrast to the current state of the art, our goal is to enhance aerial robotic physical interaction capabilities of highly dynamical aerial manipulators (AMs) by considering almost unexplored directions:

- manipulations tasks of articulated and dynamic objects;
- real scenarios requiring the use of onboard sensors only.
- The project will focus on the design of sensor-based control algorithms to make aerial robots much more precise, robust and safe while performing physical interaction tasks involving articulated objects, in real environments. As a final demonstrator we want to show an aerial robot equipped with an articulated arm capable to open a door with onboard sensors only.

**Principales activités**:
The project will address the following points:

- **Reactive manipulation planner**: Develop a reactive manipulation planner which makes the robot able to perform complex manipulation tasks while quickly reacting to external disturbances and unexpected events (like wind or loss of contact). For this we will rely on fast re-planning concepts similar to MPC methods and Model Predictive Path-Integral Control (MPPI) [4].
- **Sensors-based manipulation planner**: Integrate a sensing framework such that the system will rely on onboard sensors only. We also want to formally consider the constraints imposed by the sensing framework in the motion planning problem.
- **Robust manipulation planner**: Improve the manipulation planner planner such that it generates motions that are intrinsically robust to model uncertainties. For this we will rely on the concept of sensitivity, as well as on deep reinforcement learning methods..
- **Experimental validation**: All previous tasks will be validated with real experiments. As a final demonstrator we want to show an aerial robot equipped with an articulated arm capable to manipulate articulated objects, e.g., open a door, using onboard sensors only.

**Avantages**:

- Subsidized meals
- Partial reimbursement of public transport costs
- Possibility of teleworking (90 days per year) and flexible organization of working hours
- Partial payment of insurance costs

**Rémunération**:
Monthly gross salary amounting to 2200 euros

**Informations générales**:

- **Thème/Domaine**: Robotique et environnements intelligents
Instrumentation et expérimentation (BAP C)
- **Ville**: Rennes
- **Centre Inria**: Centre Inria de l'Université de Rennes
- **Date de prise de fonction souhaitée**: 2025-09-01
- **Durée de contrat**: 12 mois
- **Date limite pour postuler**: 2025-07-15

**Consignes pour postuler**:
Please submit online : your resume, cover letter and letters of recommendation eventuall