PhD Vacancy on RoSee - High-Speed Neuromorphic Vision for Household Robots

IMEC

imec is the world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. The combination of our widely acclaimed leadership in microchip technology and profound software and ICT expertise is what makes us unique. By leveraging our world-class infrastructure and local and global ecosystem of partners across a multitude of industries, we create groundbreaking innovation in application domains such as healthcare, smart cities and mobility, logistics and manufacturing, and energy.

As a trusted partner for companies, start-ups and universities we bring together close to 3,500 brilliant minds from over 70 nationalities. Imec is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium and also has distributed R&D groups at a number of Flemish universities, in the Netherlands, Taiwan, USA, China, and offices in India and Japan. All of these particular traits make imec to be a top-class employer.

University of Antwerp – imec IDLab Research group

The Internet & Data Lab (IDLab) is an imec research group at the University of Antwerp and Ghent University. IDLab focuses its research on internet technologiesand data science. IDLab is a joint research initiative between Ghent University and the University of Antwerp. Bringing together 300 internet experts, we develop technologies outperforming current solutions for communication subsystems, high speed and low power networking, distributed computing and multimedia processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence and web semantics. Within Antwerp, where you will work, the overall IDLab research areas are machine learning and wireless networking. IDLab has a unique research infrastructure used in numerous national and international collaborations.

IDLab collaborates with many universities and research centres worldwide and jointly develops advanced technologies with industry (R&D centers from international companies, Flanders’ top innovating large companies and SME’s, as well as numerous ambitious startups).

The research project

Neuromorphic systems aim to replicate closely how the brain process information. An event-based camera mimics the biological vision system by asynchronously providing brightness events changes, enabling ultrafast imaging. Compared to traditional cameras, it has a much higher dynamic range, low latency, and high temporal resolution (1 μsec). Moreover, it provides a stream of information in time (event or spikes), naturally combining with how spiking neural networks process information. This combination of bio-inspired vision sensors and spiking neural networks aims to achieve novel and better machine vision paradigms (less data, less processing, lower power, lower latency), deployable in practical applications such as robot vision and autonomy (self-driving, self-flying).

In this PhD project, you will work with event-based sensors on data collected in real-time or from known datasets. You will develop a spike-based neuromorphic solution either on custom imec hardware or based on known available framework running in a computer or embedded system. More specifically, you will focus on the following research questions:

• Can we build a low power, low latency event based vision system based on spiking neural networks, requiring less data, less processing? We will investigate different solutions for event based data preprocessing, novel ways to perform spike encodings and carrying out the learning. A tradeoff between power consumption, hardware and capability of the system will be analyzed.
• Can we combine event based cameras with other sensors such as radar, or traditional cameras to argument the functions, i.e. overcome the limitation of individual sensors and achieve a greater capability. We will explore how to use and synchronize different data streams combining in a common spiking neural network substrate.
• How should this low-latency perceptual information be used by the control system towards safety and autonomy?
• How can these novel techniques be applied to achieve breakthrough robotic perception?

Depending on running projects, we will devise a demonstrator to show case the developed solutions.

• 
  You have (or will receive within a few months) a Masters of Science degree, preferably in Computer/Data Science or Engineering Science.
• You have a profound interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Knowledge on artificial and/or spiking neural networks is an additional asset.
• 
  You have a solid mathematical background, and like to couple in-depth theoretical understanding with challenging practical applications.
• You have experience with programming languages and software development.
• You are a team player and have strong communication skills.
• Your English is fluent, both speaking and writing.

How to apply
Please apply using the application button on this webpage. Applications sent to us via email will not be considered.

More information about the PhD: werner.vanleekwijck@uantwerpen.be

More HR-related/administrative information regarding a PhD: michelle.nietvelt@uantwerpen.be