PhD Position Long-Term Reasoning and Adaptive Learning for Human-Aware Robot Autonomy
€ 3.059 - € 3.881 per maandVast, Tijdelijk
Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)
Join TU Delft and the EU-funded OPERA consortium to develop long-term reasoning and adaptive learning methods for safe, human-aware robot autonomy. Job description
Autonomous robots working in human-centered environments must do more than react to immediate sensor input. They need to reason over longer time horizons, adapt to changing tasks and environmental conditions, and update their behavior when new observations become available. In the EU-funded OPERA project, TU Delft contributes to General-Purpose AI for robotics by developing methods that combine fast System 1-style behavior with more deliberate System 2-style reasoning, adaptation, and decision-making. In this PhD position, you will develop methods for long-term reasoning and adaptive robot behavior in human-centered environments. Your research will focus on how robots can use learned models, memory, semantic information, task structure, and uncertainty estimates to make robust decisions over extended time horizons. This directly connects to OPERA’s task on long-term reasoning in human-centered environments, which combines adaptive learning, hierarchical reinforcement learning, semantic maps, predictive control, and deliberative planning to support long-horizon mobile manipulation and human-centered autonomy. This project will also address learning for adaptive and robust robot interaction. You will investigate how robots can adapt their behavior in response to human proximity, predicted intent, task context, environmental change, uncertainty, or model mismatch. This may involve reinforcement learning, imitation learning, adaptive control, model learning, state estimation, semantic reasoning, or self-supervised learning. The focus is on enabling robots to remain safe and effective when operating conditions change, rather than learning policies that only work in a fixed training distribution. You will work in the Cognitive Robotics Department at TU Delft under the supervision of Prof. Robert Babuška and Dr. Laura Ferranti. You will be embedded in the Reliable Robot Control Lab and contribute to TU Delft’s OPERA work on reliable, adaptive, and trustworthy robot autonomy. Job requirements
The ideal candidate for this PhD position has a strong technical background and is enthusiastic about contributing to safe, intelligent, and adaptive robot autonomy. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds who are motivated to work at the intersection of long term reasoning, learning, and human aware robotic behaviour. You have:
Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context. At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration. Challenge. Change. Impact! Faculty Mechanical Engineering
From chip to ship. From machine to human being. From idea to solution. Driven by a deep-rooted desire to understand our environment and discover its underlying mechanisms, research and education at the ME faculty focusses on fundamental understanding, design, production including application and product improvement, materials, processes and (mechanical) systems. ME is a dynamic and innovative faculty with high-tech lab facilities and international reach. It’s a large faculty but also versatile, so we can often make unique connections by combining different disciplines. This is reflected in ME’s outstanding, state-of-the-art education, which trains students to become responsible and socially engaged engineers and scientists. We translate our knowledge and insights into solutions to societal issues, contributing to a sustainable society and to the development of prosperity and well-being. That is what unites us in pioneering research, inspiring education and (inter)national cooperation. Click here to go to the website of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Do you want to experience working at our faculty? These videos will introduce you to some of our researchers and their work. Conditions of employment
Doctoral candidates will be offered a 4-year period of employment in principle, but in the form of 2 employment contracts. An initial 1,5 year contract with an official go/no go progress assessment within 15 months. Followed by an additional contract for the remaining 2,5 years assuming everything goes well and performance requirements are met. Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities, increasing from €3059 - €3881 gross per month, from the first year to the fourth year based on a fulltime contract (38 hours), plus 8% holiday allowance and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%. As a PhD candidate you will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School. The TU Delft Graduate School provides an inspiring research environment with an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff and a mentor. The Doctoral Education Programme is aimed at developing your transferable, discipline-related and research skills. The TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, discounts on health insurance, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged. Will you need to relocate to the Netherlands for this job? TU Delft is committed to make your move as smooth as possible! The HR unit, Coming to Delft Service , offers information on their website to help you prepare your relocation. In addition, Coming to Delft Service organises events to help you settle in the Netherlands, and expand your (social) network in Delft. A Dual Career Programme is available, to support your accompanying partner with their job search in the Netherlands. Additional information
For more information, please reach out to Laura Ferranti and Robert Babuska [ Het emailadres op academictransfer.com bekijken , Het emailadres op academictransfer.com bekijken ] Application procedure
Are you interested in this vacancy? Please apply no later than 13 July 2026 via the application button and upload the following documents:
Autonomous robots working in human-centered environments must do more than react to immediate sensor input. They need to reason over longer time horizons, adapt to changing tasks and environmental conditions, and update their behavior when new observations become available. In the EU-funded OPERA project, TU Delft contributes to General-Purpose AI for robotics by developing methods that combine fast System 1-style behavior with more deliberate System 2-style reasoning, adaptation, and decision-making. In this PhD position, you will develop methods for long-term reasoning and adaptive robot behavior in human-centered environments. Your research will focus on how robots can use learned models, memory, semantic information, task structure, and uncertainty estimates to make robust decisions over extended time horizons. This directly connects to OPERA’s task on long-term reasoning in human-centered environments, which combines adaptive learning, hierarchical reinforcement learning, semantic maps, predictive control, and deliberative planning to support long-horizon mobile manipulation and human-centered autonomy. This project will also address learning for adaptive and robust robot interaction. You will investigate how robots can adapt their behavior in response to human proximity, predicted intent, task context, environmental change, uncertainty, or model mismatch. This may involve reinforcement learning, imitation learning, adaptive control, model learning, state estimation, semantic reasoning, or self-supervised learning. The focus is on enabling robots to remain safe and effective when operating conditions change, rather than learning policies that only work in a fixed training distribution. You will work in the Cognitive Robotics Department at TU Delft under the supervision of Prof. Robert Babuška and Dr. Laura Ferranti. You will be embedded in the Reliable Robot Control Lab and contribute to TU Delft’s OPERA work on reliable, adaptive, and trustworthy robot autonomy. Job requirements
The ideal candidate for this PhD position has a strong technical background and is enthusiastic about contributing to safe, intelligent, and adaptive robot autonomy. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds who are motivated to work at the intersection of long term reasoning, learning, and human aware robotic behaviour. You have:
- A MSc degree in Systems and Control, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a closely related field.
- A strong interest in working across multiple research domains, including task level reasoning, control, perception, and machine learning.
- Excellent programming skills, particularly in Python and/or C++, and experience with modern software development tools.
- A passion for ground breaking theoretical research combined with an eagerness to test ideas on real robotic systems.
- Strong analytical and mathematical abilities, enabling you to work confidently with algorithms, optimization, probability, or learning frameworks.
- Excellent communication skills and proficiency in English (written and verbal), as required for academic publication and international collaboration.
- Reinforcement learning, model-based RL, hierarchical RL, imitation learning.
- Adaptive control, learning-based control, nonlinear system identification, state estimation.
- Long-horizon planning, semantic reasoning, memory-based decision-making.
- Human-aware robot behaviour, multi-agent interaction, adaptive interaction strategies.
- Continual/self-supervised learning, uncertainty estimation, domain adaptation.
- Real robot deployment and ROS/ROS2 as a strong plus.
Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context. At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration. Challenge. Change. Impact! Faculty Mechanical Engineering
From chip to ship. From machine to human being. From idea to solution. Driven by a deep-rooted desire to understand our environment and discover its underlying mechanisms, research and education at the ME faculty focusses on fundamental understanding, design, production including application and product improvement, materials, processes and (mechanical) systems. ME is a dynamic and innovative faculty with high-tech lab facilities and international reach. It’s a large faculty but also versatile, so we can often make unique connections by combining different disciplines. This is reflected in ME’s outstanding, state-of-the-art education, which trains students to become responsible and socially engaged engineers and scientists. We translate our knowledge and insights into solutions to societal issues, contributing to a sustainable society and to the development of prosperity and well-being. That is what unites us in pioneering research, inspiring education and (inter)national cooperation. Click here to go to the website of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Do you want to experience working at our faculty? These videos will introduce you to some of our researchers and their work. Conditions of employment
Doctoral candidates will be offered a 4-year period of employment in principle, but in the form of 2 employment contracts. An initial 1,5 year contract with an official go/no go progress assessment within 15 months. Followed by an additional contract for the remaining 2,5 years assuming everything goes well and performance requirements are met. Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities, increasing from €3059 - €3881 gross per month, from the first year to the fourth year based on a fulltime contract (38 hours), plus 8% holiday allowance and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%. As a PhD candidate you will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School. The TU Delft Graduate School provides an inspiring research environment with an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff and a mentor. The Doctoral Education Programme is aimed at developing your transferable, discipline-related and research skills. The TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, discounts on health insurance, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged. Will you need to relocate to the Netherlands for this job? TU Delft is committed to make your move as smooth as possible! The HR unit, Coming to Delft Service , offers information on their website to help you prepare your relocation. In addition, Coming to Delft Service organises events to help you settle in the Netherlands, and expand your (social) network in Delft. A Dual Career Programme is available, to support your accompanying partner with their job search in the Netherlands. Additional information
For more information, please reach out to Laura Ferranti and Robert Babuska [ Het emailadres op academictransfer.com bekijken , Het emailadres op academictransfer.com bekijken ] Application procedure
Are you interested in this vacancy? Please apply no later than 13 July 2026 via the application button and upload the following documents:
- A letter of motivation explaining why you are the right candidate for this project
- An updated cv
- Exam transcipts from your Bachelor and Master
- A copy of your MSc thesis, or draft MSc thesis (or a link to access it)
- #EUfunded This is an EU funded project, named OPERA, with project number 101298363, within program HORIZON/HORIZON-CL4-2025-04-DIGITAL-EMERGING-07
- You can apply online. We will not process applications sent by email and/or post.
- As part of knowledge security, TU Delft conducts a risk assessment during the recruitment of personnel. We do this, among other things, to prevent the unwanted transfer of sensitive knowledge and technology. The assessment is based on information provided by the candidates themselves, such as their motivation letter and CV, and takes place at the final stages of the selection process. When the outcome of the assessment is negative, the candidate will be informed. The processing of personal data in the context of the risk assessment is carried out on the legal basis of the GDPR: performing a public task in the public interest. You can find more information about this assessment on our website about knowledge security.
- Please do not contact us for unsolicited services.
Vacature geplaatst op 5 dagen geleden
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