Bioinspired Vision Systems for Automated Harvesting

A PhD position is available in the Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems Research (L-CAS) at the University of Lincoln UK. The position is fully funded for 3 years, including a student bursary, tuition fees, and participation in international conferences and meetings. Please note: *this studentship is available to UK/EU candidates only*; at present we are not able to offer any studentships to international candidates.

This AHDB funded PhD will investigate the crucial problem of rapidly and robustly segmenting fruits and flowers from background vegetation which is considered key component to automation of labour-intensive horticultural processes such as fruit and flower harvesting. Inspiration will be taken from the vision system of insects that solve exactly this issue (e.g. bees, fruit-flies, aphids) with the aim to develop novel hardware and software solutions based on key abstractions. The selected candidate will benefit strongly from working in close collaboration with researchers at the University of Lincoln’s Institute for Agri-Food Technology & Centre for Autonomous Systems and with horticultural industrial partners ensuring tight coupling of academic output with commercial application.

You should have a good Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science, Electronic Engineering, Mathematics or Physics. You must have excellent mathematical, and experience in related areas such as optics, machine learning, computer vision software and hardware development are all considered beneficial. You should be available to start work on the project in the autumn of 2017 (exact start date may be negotiable).

In the first instance please contact Dr Mike Mangan ([Email Address Removed]), with your CV and transcript. Please put “AHDB Biovision PhD application” in the subject line. Applications will be assessed as they arrive and, if appropriate, we will contact applicants to discuss things further.