Robotics Engineer

Robotics engineer (starter/junior)

Are you an autonomous navigation expert? Do you have experience with robots and unmanned systems? Or do you want to apply machine learning to real problems? Join us in developing unmanned and autonomous systems!

About Demcon

DEMCON Defense & Security Systems collaborates with the Dutch ministry of defence on a number of themes: energy supply (electricity, heat, cooling) on large scale, such as for vehicles or bases, and on small (portable) scale; and autonomous systems, the development of technology for unmanned and (semi) autonomous systems.

What are you going to do?

As robotics engineer you will develop ‘autonomy’ for unmanned systems. This can mean localisation algorithms, route planning or simulation environments; or real-time analysis of camera images to determine where a vehicle can travel safely. Apart from this navigational autonomy, also the “high level” tactical behaviour of a vehicle can be made more autonomous. This vehicle could be a small scout robot, but also a larger vehicle that has to navigate autonomously, or even small drones that are controlled from a vehicle. You will become part of a team that works on all those aspects of autonomy in various projects. That means working with modern algorithms and software, sometimes straight from scientific publications, applied on real systems. The team works on things like:

Developing simulation environments (for example in GoDot)

• World generation
• Sensor simulation (LiDAR, GPS, depth camera, IMU, …)

Implementing and configuring autonomous navigation techniques such as

• Visual or LiDAR odometry
• SLAM
• Route planning
• Scene segmentation

Development of autonomous tactical behaviour, for example using

• Behaviour trees
• Deep Reinforcement Learning

In some projects we develop a simulator; in other projects we integrate algorithms on real unmanned vehicles of several types. Demcon also has two testing robots (indoor and outdoor rovers) for development and testing of autonomous functions.

What do you bring to the table?

• A college or university degree in robotics, systems & control, AI, computer science—or other technical programme with relevant subjects for the activities mentioned above.
• Experience with aspects of autonomous navigation (localisation, navigation, sensor fusion, image processing); or other aspects of robotics and a healthy confidence that navigation can be learned quickly.
• Preferably you are familiar with ROS 2 and simulation programmes such as GoDot or Gazebo.
• You know or are willing to learn Dutch.

What do we offer you?

At Demcon we value a nice workplace. For example, we have good coffee and there is free fresh fruit waiting for you every week. There is also a lot of personal attention and we discourage overtime because we know how important home is.

Furthermore, you can count on, among other things:

• A good, market-based salary;
• 31 days off and 8% vacation allowance;
• A good pension plan at Zwitserleven;
• The opportunity to follow training and courses through the Demcon Academy so you can further develop your knowledge;
• A laptop and telephone from work;
• Bicycle plan;
• Active personnel association (monthly activities such as drinks and an annual Demcon weekend) and annual sporting events.