PDEng Position in Robotics at University of Twente

The Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) program Robotics offers you a 2-year position combining post MSc education and a design project to be executed at Alliander.

The educational program, carried out at the University of Twente, will have an in-depth and broadening character with ample attention for professional development and will be partly tailored to the design project. In collaboration with Alliander in Arnhem you will work on high level, creative new designs for complex issues.

About the project: Roboconnect, development of a robotic solution for live cable splicing.
Due to the current energy transition, the demand on our power grid is constantly growing. Therefore the grid has to be expanded significantly in the coming years. An important part in the expansion of the grid is cable splicing: making a new connection between two cables. This is a time consuming task that requires highly trained mechanics. Currently 20.000 to 30.000 new connections should be made on a yearly basis and this number will increase in the coming years. In order to increase productivity and safety, we require new robotic solutions which is the main goal of this project.

You will develop robotic solutions that can perform under difficult, real-life conditions. You will use state of the art mechatronics design, possibly including AI, and computer-vision to build a co-bot: a robot tool that can collaborate with the human operator in charge; You will work from the Robotics and Mechatronics lab, where there is much experience in all said topics, and you will collaborate directly with (field) specialists from Alliander.