Scientist, Autonomous Systems & Robotics, IAIC

A*STAR - Agency for Science, Technology and Research; Singapore; On-site; SGD 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A*STAR - Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore invites applications for a role in their Cognitive and Human‑like AI group. The position focuses on conducting R&D in Embodied Artificial Intelligence, aimed at developing robots that can work alongside humans in real-world tasks.

Successful candidates will be involved in tasks such as designing algorithms for human-robot interaction, performing system integration, and collaborating on research activities. A PhD in a relevant field is essential as well as skills in Python and C++.

Qualifications

• PhD in Robotics or a field of study related to Embodied Artificial Intelligence.
• Good programming skills in Python and/or C++ is essential.
• Experience with ROS, Linux and/or other robotic middleware systems is an advantage.

Responsibilities

• Research in human-robot interaction involving multimodal perception and decision making.
• Design EAI algorithms for human-centric spatial awareness and intent prediction.
• Development and testing of human-robot interaction modules for robotics applications.

Skills

Programming skills in Python

Programming skills in C++

Good communication

Team player

Education

PhD in Robotics or related field

Tools

ROS

Linux

Job description

Job Summary

The Cognitive and Human‑like AI group at the Institute of High Performance Computing, A*STAR, Singapore invites applications with passion to conduct R&D in Embodied Artificial Intelligence (EAI) to endow robots with human‑like intelligence to work collaboratively with humans on real‑world tasks. The goal is for robots to become peer‑like co‑workers capable of understanding, adapting, and sharing responsibilities with humans, while embedding safety, commonsense reasoning, and continual learning for reliable deployment within complex human environments.

Responsibilities

You will be part of our team developing collaborative intelligence for robots for application in the domain of manufacturing, trade and connectivity.

The successful candidate will be involved in some or all of the following tasks:

• Research in human‑robot interaction involving multimodal perception, human and situation understanding, world representation, decision making, learning and behaviour.
• Design EAI algorithms such as for human‑centric spatial awareness and intent prediction to ensure safe, fluid, and proactive collaboration between humans and robots in shared workspaces.
• Development, experimentation, testing and system integration of human‑robot interaction modules for various real world robotics applications.
• Actively collaborate with other researchers in R&D activities including scientific writing, algorithm development, testing and deployment of the intelligence systems.

Requirements

• PhD in Robotics or a field of study related to EAI (e.g. Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Cognitive Science, Cognitive Architectures, Robotic Foundation Models, etc.).
• Good programming skills in python and/or C++ is essential.
• Experience with ROS, Linux and/or other robotic middleware system is an advantage.
• Experience in dataset curation and fine‑tuning Vision‑Language‑Action (VLA) or Vision‑Language Models (VLM) for robotics is an advantage.
• Past work in the following areas is an advantage: 3D vision and spatial reasoning; human‑robot interaction; situation representation of human‑agent shared tasks/spaces; representation, modelling and reasoning of human actions/behaviours.
• Good communication skill, a team player and resourceful.