The post will be assigned to the Department of Engineering Design and Mathematics, which is part of the Faculty of Environment and Technology. BRL has a long-standing track record of research in safety assurance of autonomous systems, with a particular focus on safety validation of autonomous behaviour.
The successful candidate will be expected to participate in the ongoing BRL research theme in Verification & Validation for Safety in Robots but will also be expected to develop others. The candidate will be expected to work with existing BRL application domains in Connected Autonomous Vehicles, Assistive Robotics, Robots for Hazardous Environments, and Manufacturing robotics. However, as research in robots matures it seems likely that the candidate’s work will impact many more application domains than these. BRL is fully equipped with state-of-the art facilities for carrying out this research. The BRL houses dedicated research spaces and numerous robot platforms, for example, advanced vehicle simulation platforms, an integrated intelligent home environment, and a comprehensive nuclear decommissioning emulator room.
Research Topics
We seek to appoint an expert in the field of safety engineering of robotics and autonomous systems, with a focus on one or more of the following topics:
- Risk assessment, safety analysis, and safety requirements specification
- Safety-directed design, and safety technology
- Verification and validation of safety
- Safety cases and argumentation for robotics and autonomous systems
- Safety standards, regulation, and certification processes
- Safety auditing of robotic and autonomous systems
Responsibilities
The responsibilities include mostly research activities, which includes attracting external funding for new projects in the research area. We also offer research-aligned teaching on safety and validation in the successful MSc Robotics (in collaboration with University of Bristol) and BEng Robotics programmes at the University of the West of England. Finally, we also expect the successful candidate to take over PhD student supervision in the FARSCOPE Centre for Doctoral Training, which has 10 PhD students every year.
Qualifications
We are looking for candidates who have demonstrated excellent achievements in research and teaching in an internationally recognized scientific environment. A university degree and an outstanding doctoral degree or equivalent scientific qualification, as well as pedagogical aptitude, are prerequisites.
About the University of the West of England
This post is based at our lively Frenchay campus where we have invested in the latest facilities and resources to give both our staff and students access to everything they need to succeed – £300m has been invested recently on new state-of-the-art learning spaces and accommodation while we continue to develop incredible new facilities to enhance our offer even further.
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