Postdoctoral Scholar - SAF Lab, Compass

About the role

The SAF Lab is the first industry research lab dedicated to safe autonomy, developing a universal safety layer for the next generation of robotic systems. You will work with the inventor of control barrier functions, pushing the frontiers of performant safety for highly dynamic robots.

Responsibilities

• Perform research around safe autonomy on highly dynamic robots, with a special focus on loco-manipulation and dynamically stable robots.
• Develop the simulation and evaluation pipelines needed to run complex and large-scale validation of methods developed in high fidelity simulation environments.
• Develop sim-to-real transfer pipelines that enable the deployment of simulation-based methods (controllers, policies) on hardware.
• Deploy the methods developed on hardware, with a focus on dynamically stable robots.
• Validate the underlying science developed in practice and identify gaps between the science and practice to drive innovation in research.
• Publish research at top-tier robotics, control and ML venues and contribute to Amazon's scientific reputation in advanced robotics.
• Collaborate with product teams and science leaders to set a science roadmap (with eventual impact on real robots).

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Control, Mechanical Engineer, Electrical Engineering, or a related field with a focus on control, learning, and/or robotics.
• Deep understanding of safety-critical control, including control barrier functions and safety filters.
• Proficiency in C++ and Python with experience implementing control algorithms and/or learning policies.
• Experience with physics simulators for robotics (e.g., Isaac Gym/Sim, MuJoCo, PyBullet) and experience validating on physical robotic hardware (not simulation-only).
• Track record of publications at top-tier venues in control and robotics (e.g., RSS, ICRA, IROS, CDC, CoRL, NeurIPS, ICLR, L-CSS, RAL, TRO, TAC).