Internship: Optimization-simulation for a fleet of autonomous agricultural robots

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INRAE presentation

The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) is a major player in research and innovation. It is a community of 12,000 people with 272 research, experimental research, and support units located in 18 regional centres throughout France. Internationally, INRAE is among the top research organisations in the agricultural and food sciences, plant and animal sciences, as well as in ecology and environmental science. It is the world’s leading research organisation specialising in agriculture, food and the environment. INRAE’s goal is to be a key player in the transitions necessary to address major global challenges. Faced with a growing world population, climate change, resource scarcity, and declining biodiversity, the Institute has a major role to play in building solutions and supporting the necessary acceleration of agricultural, food and environmental transitions.

Work environment, missions and activities

In the context of the MSCA (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action) program GreenField Data, a PhD in modelisation-optimisation will take place between the University of Aarhus (Denmark) and INRAE (Clermont-Ferrand, France). The goal of this internship is to recruit a student who will start working on the topic of the PhD in order to strengthen their eventual application to the PhD.

The goal of the PhD is to work on modelisation-optimisation for a fleet of autonomous agricultural robots shared between farms. The proposed model is the following: several sites will be deserved by the robotic fleet. Each site has specific needs that we can anticipate, and other that can happen in an unforeseen manner. The central planner will have to deploy the robots on sites in an optimal way (under different criteria), while taking unplanned events (new needs, breakdowns, delays, etc) into account. Managing each robot within each site will be left to a local supervisor, but the local progress of each task will be followed at the central level to adjust solutions.

The internship will allow the recruited student to start apprehending the scientific literature and to accomplish some initial work:

- a literature review on route planning, coverage path planning, and scheduling with dynamic constraints (it is not expected to be a full review, but should be enough to grasp the topic);

- conception of a formal model describing the environment and the robotic fleet;

- definition of the static constraints and of the objectives to optimize (makespan, fairness of use, costs, yield, ...). The multi-objective aspect will be taken into account, but not the dynamic constraints (breakdowns, delays, ...) yet.

- first resolution methods (heuristics or efficient exact ones): conception, implementation, analysis, experimentation, evaluation.

Notes:

- the candidates to the PhD cannot have spent more than 12 months in France out of the last 36 months before the start of the PhD (MSCA mobility rule);

- MSCA PhDs have higher salaries than regular PhDs.

Please send a cover letter, a resume and available grades from your Masters.

Training and skills

Recommended training: Masters degree in computer science or applied mathematics.

Desired knowledge: Operations research, optimization, algorithms, programing.

Appreciated experience: Research internship.

Skills: English langage (C1), communication, scientific curiosity

INRAE's life quality

By joining our teams, you benefit from (depending on the type of contract and its duration):

- 2,5 days off per month of attendance;
- parenting support: CESU childcare, leisure services;
- skills development systems: training, career advise;
- social support: advice and listening, social assistance and loans;
- holiday and leisure services: holiday vouchers, accommodation at preferential rates;
- sports and cultural activities;
- collective catering.

The Cézeaux site is served by subway line A, and is also equipped with parking facilities and services dedicated to cycling.

How to apply

I send my CV and my motivation letter