The RAS-Berry project will develop autonomous fleets of robots for in-field transportation to aid and complement human fruit pickers. In particular, the project will consider strawberry production in polytunnels. A solution for autonomous in-field transportation will significantly decrease strawberry production costs and be the first step towards fully autonomous robotic systems for berry production.
The project will develop a dedicated mobile platform together with software components for fleet management, long-term operation and safe human robot collaboration in strawberry production facilities.
The project is a collaboration between the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) and University of Lincoln, and is looking to employ a total of three postdocs and four PhD students. The successful candidates will have access to state-of-the art research farms that will be equipped with production facilities with industrial standard. The project also has access to a wide variety of agricultural robots with advanced sensors and tools. This equipment is already installed on the research farms and will be made available to the project. There is a strong focus on developing solutions that are robust in realistic scenarios, and extensive field testing is therefore required. In order to coordinate the work of everyone involved in the project, several workshops will be held both in Norway and the UK.
The following posts are advertised by the University of Lincoln
- Research Fellow in System Integration
- Research Fellow in Long-term World Representations (Closing: April 24th)
- PhD studentship in Safe Human Robot Interaction
- PhD studentship in 3D Vision for Fruit Picking
The following posts are advertised by the Norwegian University of Life Sciences
- Research Fellow in Task Planning and Scheduling (Closing: April 2nd)
- PhD Studentship in Navigation for Mobile robots in the Agricultural Domain (Closing: this position has closed)
