Postbaccalaureate Appointee - Robotics Software Developer, Rapid Prototyping Laboratory

The Rapid Prototyping Laboratory (RPL) in the Data Science and Learning division builds self-driving laboratories, where robots, scientific instruments and AI work together to run experiments with minimal human intervention. We are seeking a Postbachelor Appointee to develop the robotics software that makes these laboratories work, and to bring new robotic platforms into them.

You will integrate robotic hardware into our autonomous laboratories, including robotic arms, mobile manipulators and humanoid platforms such as Dexmate. This work spans the full path from an unfamiliar robot arriving on a loading dock to that robot running experiments under our orchestration software. You will write and extend device modules and REST APIs in MADSci, our open-source laboratory orchestration framework, so that each new platform becomes controllable through the same interface as the rest of the laboratory.

A second part of the role is sensor integration and data collection for robot learning. You will instrument robots with cameras, tactile and force sensors, collect demonstration data using teleoperation devices, and support the training and evaluation of policies built on large robotics foundation models. You will help determine which tasks are good candidates for learned policies and which are better served by conventional control.

Much of this work involves hardware and software that are new to the group, with incomplete vendor documentation and no established integration path. We are looking for someone who treats that as the interesting part of the job. You will work closely with staff across robotics, software and the scientific domains we support, and your contributions to MADSci will be released publicly.

Position Requirements

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