PhD in Learning- Control Autonomous Underwater Manipulation

The Department of Engineering Cybernetics has a vacancy for a PhD Candidate

NTNU is a broad-based university with atechnical-scientific profile and a focusin professional education. The university is located in three cities with headquarters in Trondheim.

At NTNU, 9,000 employees and 43,000 students work to create knowledge for a better world.

You will find more information about working at NTNU and the application process here.

In this position, you will explore how modern learning-based control and perception methods can enhance the autonomy and precision of underwater manipulation operations, such as valve turning and retrieving objects from the sea floor. You will investigate techniques for robust perception in challenging underwater environments, including visual (and acoustic) sensing to enable reliable object detection, scene understanding, and interaction. You will thus contribute toward the ultimate goal of enabling the next generation of underwater robots to perform complex manipulation tasks fully autonomously – a key capability for subsea exploration, maintenance, and repair.

This position is part of the Norwegian Centre for Embodied AI.

The PhD candidate will be supervised by Professor Kristin Y. Pettersen, with Professor Annette Stahl as co-supervisor.

Join a nation-wide team: The Norwegian Centre for Embodied AI (NCEI), one of Norway’s six national AI centres, is recruiting outstanding researchers to advance a universal science of embodied intelligence. NCEI brings together leading robotics and AI groups with key partners from industry and the public sector to study how intelligence emerges from the interaction between body, computation, and environment, across flying, ground, and aquatic robot configurations.

Our mission is to chart a generalisable path for physical AI and transform how robot morphology and autonomy are co-designed, enabling new generations of systems tailored to their operational environments and missions. Successful candidates will join an international community with world-class facilities and strong collaborations across Norwegian universities, research institutes, industry, public agencies, and leading global institutions. We welcome motivated applicants in robotics, control, AI, machine learning, physics, and related fields, including early-stage researchers eager to contribute to this emerging scientific frontier.

• Complete your doctoral education leading to the PhD degree.
• Conduct and publish research of high-quality within the framework described above.
• Participate in international activities such as conferences and/or research stays abroad.
• Collaborate with other researchers within the department, and across departments at NTNU.
• Supervise master’s thesis students related to the project.
• Upon agreement with the candidate and the department, the position may be extended if the candidate undertakes career-enhancing work beyond the research project, such as teaching duties.

Be prepared for changes to your work duties after employment.

• You must have a Master's degree in cybernetics, control systems, or equivalent, with a strong training in control of marine vehicles and/or robots. Additional training in machine learning methods is an advantage. Your degree must correspond to a five-year Norwegian program, where 120 credits have been obtained at master's level. Master’s students in their final year are welcome to apply; employment will then be postponed until the master’s degree is completed.
• You must have a strong academic background from your previous studies and have an average grade from your Master's degree study, or equivalent education, which is equal to B or better compared to NTNU's grading scale. If you do not have letter grades from previous studies, you must have an equally good academic foundation. If you have slightly weaker grades, you may be considered if you can document that you are particularly suitable for a PhD education.
• You must fulfil the admission requirements for the PhD programme at…