CNRS-AIST JRL(Joint Robotics Laboratory), IRL

There are several ways to be a member of JRL.

Permanent Positions

You can find job opportunities of AIST here. We usually have two rounds of recruitment every year in Spring and Fall. Since the JRL belongs to the department of Information Technology and Human factors (ITH), please check recruitment information of the department. It is recommended to contact before submitting an application.

Visiting Researchers

If you want to stay at JRL as a visiting researcher, please contact us.
JSPS fellows can be hosted at JRL. If you are planning to apply to JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowships for Research in Japan or Invitational Fellowships for Research in Japan, please contact us.

Contractual Positions

We sometimes post job opportunities for contract employees (postdoc and engineer) to here (only in Japanese).

Students/Internships

(Click here for HumanoidLab page)

Students can be hosted at JRL as technical trainees and excellent master/PhD students can be hired as a research assistant of AIST. Although students from any universities can do their internships at JRL, students from the following universities can do their thesis at JRL under supervision of researchers of JRL.

University of Tsukuba:
Since some JRL members are adjunct professors of University of Tsukuba, master and PhD students can do their thesis by enrolling at University of Tsukuba and doing research work at JRL. Humanoid Laboratory is a laboratory of University of Tsukuba hosted by JRL using Cooperative Graduate School System.
University of Montpellier:
PhD students of University of Montpellier can do their thesis at JRL. The JRL is the only one laboratory outside of France where PhD students of University of Montpellier can do their PhD thesis.
Other French universities:
Students from some other French universities can also do a part of their Ph.D. thesis at JRL. Please don't hesitate to contact us for more details.

Open topics

Currently, we are offering the following topics. If you want to do your internship or thesis at JRL, please contact us.

Title	Abstract	Grade	Expected skills
Adaptive torque control	Usually the control of robots rely on precise models, however, these can be unavailable or drift over time. Adaptive control techniques will be expected to correct for these modeling errors and compensate for them during the motion. The student will be working on our humanoid robots.	master (possibility to extend to PhD)	Preferred: C++, control theory, multibody dynamics Required: basic calculus, spoken English language
Humanoid robots force control for multi-contact locomotion	Locomotion control of legged robots requires force control that relies usually on contact force sensors, however humanoid or legged robot may use parts of their body that are not equipped with these sensors such as elbows and knees. In this work the student will develop and test a control of this kind of contact.	Master (possibility to extend to PhD)	Preferred: C++, ROS, control theory, multibody mechanics. Required: basic geometry and calculus, spoken English language
Safe training of neural networks on real robotic platforms	In most cases the training of neural networks to control the motion of humanoid and legged robots, happen in numerical simulation and then transferred to the real robot. In this work the student will design a framework to train neural networks directly on the real robot. They need to ensure the safety and the autonomy of the learning pipeline.	Master/PhD	Preferred: C++, Deep learning, ROS, multibody mechanics. Required: spoken English language
Direct Visual Servoing with optimal robot trajectories	Robot motion control from camera image brightness Accuracy < 1 mm but 3D trajectories are not ideal Goals: Implement damping control near singularities Multi-objective optimization to constrain the trajectory Online selection of the camera field-of-view maximizing the motion perceptibility	Master/PhD	C++ programming, mathematical background
Contact-Ready Robust Hydraulic Actuator for Mobile Robots	To vastly increase the use of robots, tasks with contacts are inevitable. In this research, we aim to develop robust and force sensitive hydraulic actuators to realize robust and dexterous manipulation on mobile robots.	Master	Mechanical design, 3D CAD, Basic fluid dynamics, Basic mechatronics
Optimal structural design and structural force sensing for robot systems	Force sensitivity is an important feature for robots that co-exist with humans. However, use of torque sensor was limited from increase in weight and size, and lowering of resonance frequency. In this research, we study force sensing technique using structural materials and optimization of sensitivity and structural robustness.	Master	Mechanical design, Basic electronics, Basic numerical optimization
AR-based UI for Avatar teleoperation	Project: Immersive humanoid teleoperation using VR devices Goals: Develop immersive UI using AR elements Not only an intuitive HUD, but also object-recognition-based visual aids for semiautomatic manipulation Handheld controller-free	Master	Development experience in Unity C++ programming
Teleoperated grasping and tactile sensing using underactuated hands and haptic gloves	Project: Immersive humanoid teleoperation using haptic devices Goals: Develop haptic system that allows not only to grasp objects via teleoperation, but to transmit the tactile sensation to the operator via force / vibrotactile feedback	Master	Control theory, C++ programming, basic familiarity with Linux
Responsive multi-contact locomotion	Passing through narrow space using not only legs but also arms freely Efficient search for contact transition and whole-body motion Efficient solver for non-linear model predictive control	Master/PhD	Dynamics, Control theory, Optimization, Graph search, Programming(c++), (Machine learning)
Data-driven quadruped controller toward outdoor exploration	Data-driven controller for quadruped robot to traverse uneven outdoor environments Multimodal sensor fusion robust to environmental changes SimToReal that requires no parameter fine-tuning	Master	Reinforcement learning, RNN, DNN, Programming(python, c++)
Construction and Retrieval of Multi-contact Motion Library for Humanoid Robot	We offer research about the methodology of construction and retrieval of motion library to achieve on-site multi-contact motion planning for a humanoid robot. We want to clarify the structure of the motion library, which can preserve the feasible whole-body motion of a humanoid robot. We also want to develop the online adaptation method to modify preserved motion to satisfy kinematics and dynamics constraints in an unknown environment.	PhD	Basic knowledge of robotics, Software development by C++ and Python with ROS

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