The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology is Austria’s largest Research and Technology Organisation (RTO). We aim to transform scientific excellence into innovation with impact. Together with our partners, we develop technologies and solutions for a sustainable, resilient, and digitalized future, strengthening Europe’s competitiveness and technological sovereignty. Our international teams combine cutting-edge research with strong implementation expertise to create measurable value for industry and society.
Our research unit Complex Dynamical Systems located in Vienna (Argentinierstraße) at the Center for Vision, Automation & Control invites applications for a master thesis. We focus our research on modelling, simulation, analysis and optimsation and control of complex and dynamical industrial systems and processes to enhance product quality, increase flexibility, and improve resource efficiency. These methods are applied accross a broad range of industrial domains such as mechatronics, robotics, and industrial production facilities.
As part of this master’s thesis, you will investigate hybrid motion planning methods for real-time model predictive control in robotics, with a particular focus on combining gradient-based and sampling-based optimisation techniques. Motion planning enables autonomous vehicles and robots to navigate safely and efficiently in complex environments. However, nonlinear dynamics, state and actuation constraints, and environments containing multiple obstacles give rise to non-convex optimisation landscapes in which gradient-based methods may converge to local minima and fail to compute feasible trajectories. Stochastic optimisation methods, such as Model Predictive Path Integral Control (MPPI), have been developed to mitigate these limitations by improving exploration of the solution space. However, such methods can suffer from noisy solutions and slow convergence. Hybrid approaches aim to combine the fast local convergence properties of gradient-based optimal control with the global exploration capabilities of sampling-based methods.
Your qualifications as an Ingenious Partner:
- Ongoing master's studies in the field of automation & control, technical mathematics, technical Informatics or a comparable technical field.
- Excellent knowledge in the field of optimization
- Excellent knowledge of MATLAB and Python.
- Excellent technical understanding & analytical capabilities
- Enjoyment of application-oriented questions of industry
- High level of commitment and team spirit
- Good knowledge of German and/or English in word and writing
What to expect:
- Duration of the master’s thesis project: approximately 6 months
- Dedicated guidance and supervision from our experienced researchers, who will support you throughout your final thesis - from the initial concept to the final results.
EUR 616,44,- - gross per month for 12 hours/week based on the collective agreement.
- Highlights of our employee benefits include meal allowance, organic coffee, tea and fruit baskets, preventive healthcare benefits and company doctor, additional days off for various life events, leisure subsidies, voucher programme, sports, cultural and socialising events, as well as flexitime models (incl. home office possibilities up to 50%).
At AIT diversity and inclusion are of great importance. This is why we strive to inspire women to join our teams in the field of technology. We welcome applications from women, who will be given preference in case of equal qualifications after taking into account all relevant facts and circumstances of all applications.
Please submit your complete application documents online, consisting of your CV, a cover letter, relevant certificates (transcript of records), as well as a proof of identity.
Apply now!
