R&D Associate - Robotics and Navigation

Overview:

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is the largest US Department of Energy (DOE) science and energy laboratory, conducting basic and applied research to deliver transformative solutions to compelling problems in energy and security. Within ORNL, the Building Envelope Materials Research Group develops and deploys affordable, energy efficient and resilient building envelopes for new construction and retrofits to enable DOE’s goals. Our synergistic research areas include building science, material and system development, and industrialized construction. With the support from the U.S. DOE Building Technologies Office, we have the most extensive building envelope research portfolio in the nation.

The Envelopes Group, in partnership with the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute (UT-ORII), is seeking an early career engineer to contribute to groundbreaking research on robotics and navigation that is tailored for building construction with the goals of lessening the shortage in skilled labor, increasing productivity, improving quality, enhancing safety, and lowering cost. As an ORNL staff member, the successful applicant will be part of a team of ORNL researchers and university research faculty in a UT-ORII Convergent Research Initiative focused on the development of state-of-the-art technologies for affordable manufacturing of energy-efficient, resilient buildings. In addition to being an ORNL staff member, since this role will be aligned with a UT-ORII convergent research initiative, you will also be considered a UT-ORII Fellow.

As an ORNL staff member and UT-ORII fellow, your career will develop in collaboration with researchers from both UT and ORNL through this early-career position at ORNL and with a Joint-Research Faculty (JFO) appointment at UT. As an integral part of the team, you will engage in a dynamic blend of activities. In addition to helping shape research programs, mentorship will be a key aspect of your role, guiding and inspiring graduate and undergraduate students. As a valued, early career researcher in both the ORNL Buildings and Transportation Science Directorate and UT-ORII, you'll have access to a rich network of resources, including seminars, training opportunities, and collaborations that will propel your career forward.

We are seeking an R&D Associate in Robotics and Navigation with expertise in the development of autonomous exploration and mapping robotic platforms. The successful candidate should have strong background in (1) integration of heterogeneous sensors and onboard computing hardware; (2) development of methods for LiDAR-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), autonomous navigation, trajectory planning, and point cloud mapping; and (3) deployment of the developed algorithms on physical mobile robots operating in GPS-denied, low-light, and geometrically repetitive environments. The candidate will collaborate with multidisciplinary researchers in robotics, surveying, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence.

More About UT-ORII:

The University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute is a partnership of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and UT created to prepare interdisciplinary leaders in energy, science, and technology and develop a world-class workforce for industry, government, and academia that will drive innovation and create the industries of the future. More information is available at University of Tennessee - Oak Ridge Innovation Institute (utorii.com). Today’s energy economy is driven by disruptive technologies and swift change. The US is in a global competition for jobs, talent, and investment. To successfully compete, we must develop leadership talent in research and development (R&D), encourage entrepreneurship, and create an educational environment that promotes rapid innovation and attracts skilled professionals. Leveraging a 75-plus-year UT-ORNL partnership, UT and ORNL have developed joint institutes, joint facilities, interdisciplinary PhD programs, and comprehensive joint faculty arrangements, including 17 Governor’s Chairs recruited for the significance of their impacts in their fields. UT-ORII’s overall goal is to become a center for convergent research and talent development, helping maintain US prominence as a global innovation leader and providing tangible benefits to Tennessee.

Major Duties/Responsibilities:

• Conduct research on technologies that make new building construction and retrofits of existing buildings affordable, energy efficient, and resilient.
• Design and implement a modular ROS 2 software architecture for onboard sensing, autonomy, mapping, data logging, launch management, and configuration management.
• Develop and integrate ROS 2 drivers and hardware interfaces for LiDAR, inertial measurement units, RGB or stereo cameras, wheel odometry, survey-grade laser scanners, and additional sensing systems.
• Develop robust procedures for sensor calibration, coordinate-frame management, timestamp synchronization, and data acquisition across heterogeneous devices.
• Develop and evaluate multi-sensor localization and state-estimation methods that fuse LiDAR, IMU, camera, and wheel-odometry data in GPS-denied, low-light environments.
• Implement LiDAR-based or LiDAR-inertial SLAM, factor-graph or pose-graph optimization, loop-closure validation, drift estimation, and drift-correction methods for long trajectories in environments with limited and repetitive geometric features.
• Develop autonomous navigation capabilities, including path planning, obstacle avoidance, autonomous exploration, frontier selection, and localization-aware trajectory planning.
• Develop high accuracy point cloud registration and mapping workflows.
• Plan and conduct experiments on physical robotic systems.
• Establish quantitative measures for localization drift, mapping accuracy, and navigation reliability.
• Publish results in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and commu