Head of Mechanical Engineering (m/f/d)

We offer vision, participation and autonomy.

We are a small, experienced and interdisciplinary team that has developed a new generation of social robots through a deep tech approach: Navel is a robotic character that acts like a living being and whose sympathetic presence is enjoyed. I.e. we are working on making AI and Robotics intuitively accessible to everyone, integrating state of the art technologies in a way that is suitable for everyday life and thus touching people’s hearts and bringing about positivity. In this way, we want to open up and revolutionize new markets such as care internationally.

For this we are looking for an experienced colleague who is responsible for the internal and external development of all mechanical components up to production.

What you should bring with you

  • Bachelor’s degree (or higher) in Mechanical or Mechatronics field
  • +3 years of industrial experience
  • Parametric design and free-form surfaces (currently Fusion360)
  • Design suitable for plastics and production ready data
  • Simulation
  • Various production processes (3D printing, injection molding, sheet metal, etc.)
  • Selection of mechatronic components in coordination
  • Interdisciplinary cooperation
  • Planning, organization and management
  • Communication and leadership
  • Business fluent in written and spoken German and English

These are your tasks

  • Construction
    • Optimization of components
    • Design suitable for injection molding
    • Sheet metal design
    • Cost optimization
    • Redesign of components
    • Selection of mechatronic components
    • Surfaces, structures
    • Material selection
  • 3D printing and prototyping
  • Organization external design support
  • Organization external production
  • Organization assembly internal
  • Orders
  • Quality management
  • Support certification and assurance complience
  • Version management
  • Time and cost planning

What we offer

  • Modern and innovative startup
  • Shares in the company
  • Training leave and budget
  • Hybrid working & very flexible working hours
  • Wide scope for creativity
  • Short ways & open ears
  • Attractive, likeable product with social impact & publicity
  • Opportunity to build your own very broad area of responsibility within the growing team

Want to learn more about this position?
Please just contact us at job@navelrobotics.com

Senior Software Developer (m/f/d)
Navigation

We offer a great vision and exciting challenges

We are an experienced, yet small and interdisciplinary team that tackles one of the most advanced challenges of the modern tech world: building an lively, enjoyable artificial character, suitable for everyday use. This requires making robotics and AI driven software intuitively accessible for everyone, aiming to touch peoples’s hearts and creating a positive difference.

For this we are looking for an experienced software developer who knows what he and his software are doing at any time and is interested in learning new topics again and again.

Your first challenge
Our robot platform, equipped with a 3D camera, multiple sonar sensors and locomotion is in need of the capability to safely move around and between people. To achieve this you will be writing the various parts of the navigation software. Starting with local movements between people, approaching people and avoiding obstacles, later expanding this with mapping and localization within rooms and throughout buildings.

This is how we work

  • Lean, efficient and simple is the goal of our work, especially as a start-up we are working on tight resources
  • Lean development starts with lean tooling: VS Codium, llvm/clang, make and git, that’s all you need to get started developing on navel
  • We keep our feedback loops short, features are to be developed, reviewed and ready to get merged within two weeks. This ensures frequent success stories, fast learning and low divergence to the main branch
  • We like open-source and we don’t reinvent the wheel. Whenever feasible we make use of well established and well tested libraries, as far as they meet our standards

This is how our robot navel works

  • Heart of our hardware is a Jetson AGX Xavier running an embedded Linux
  • Core tasks – such as reading and evaluating camera frames, communicating with the various microcontrollers, rendering graphics for eyes and mouth, speech recognition and synthesis – are handled by a monolith, manly written in C, partially making use of CUDA and TensorRT. We aim for simplicity and stability.
  • Streams of pre-processed data and the high-level control of the robot are then exposed via an Unix domain socket and protobuf based API. While we currently use Python for prototyping, we are open and interested in evaluating other languages, such as Go.

This is who you are

  • You are an expert in C on Linux
  • Embedded development doesn’t scare you
  • Eloquent is the best word to describe how you are handling git and make
  • You bring along some solid experience with Python
  • You have dealt with software projects comprising several 10k LOC, while maintaining a lean software architecture, the KISS-principle and similar
  • It might be beneficial if you have made at least some baby steps in the area of navigation, path planning or the like
  • Some further knowledge in relevant areas, such as image recognition, computer linguistics are also welcome

Want to learn more about this position?
Please just contact us at job@navelrobotics.com

Senior Software Developer (m/f/d)
Computer Vision

We offer a great vision and exciting challenges

We are an experienced, yet small and interdisciplinary team that tackles one of the most advanced challenges of the modern tech world: building an lively, enjoyable artificial character, suitable for everyday use. This requires making robotics and AI driven software intuitively accessible for everyone, aiming to touch peoples’s hearts and creating a positive difference.

For this we are looking for an experienced software developer who knows what he and his software are doing at any time and is interested in learning new topics again and again.

Your first challenge
Our robot platform, equipped with two cameras, one located in its head another one located in its chest, already efficiently and successfully extracts data, such as head orientation, eye gaze and more from captured frames. There is a bit more to do, though. You start extending our computer vision pipeline with object recognition and skeleton recognition. Based the later, we want to implement  activity recognition in the future. Your journey might also soon take a turn into audio processing.

This is how we work

  • Lean, efficient and simple is the goal of our work, especially as a start-up we are working on tight resources
  • Lean development starts with lean tooling: VS Codium, llvm/clang, make and git, that’s all you need to get started developing on navel
  • We keep our feedback loops short, features are to be developed, reviewed and ready to get merged within two weeks. This ensures frequent success stories, fast learning and low divergence to the main branch
  • We like open-source and we don’t reinvent the wheel. Whenever feasible we make use of well established and well tested libraries, as far as they meet our standards

This is how our robot navel works

  • Heart of our hardware is a Jetson AGX Xavier running an embedded Linux
  • Core tasks – such as reading and evaluating camera frames, communicating with the various microcontrollers, rendering graphics for eyes and mouth, speech recognition and synthesis – are handled by a monolith, manly written in C, partially making use of CUDA and TensorRT. We aim for simplicity and stability.
  • Streams of pre-processed data and the high-level control of the robot are then exposed via an Unix domain socket and protobuf based API. While we currently use Python for prototyping, we are open and interested in evaluating other languages, such as Go.

This is who you are

  • You are an expert in C on Linux
  • Embedded development doesn’t scare you
  • Eloquent is the best word to describe how you are handling git and make
  • You bring along some solid experience with Python
  • You have dealt with software projects comprising several 10k LOC, while maintaining a lean software architecture, the KISS-principle and similar
  • It might be beneficial if you have made at least some baby steps in the area of computer vision, or the like
  • Some further knowledge in relevant areas, such as navigation, computer linguistics are also welcome

Want to learn more about this position?
Please just contact us at job@navelrobotics.com

Working Student (m/f/d)

We are currently starting the product launch and delivering the first robots to research institutions and nursing homes. The robot consists of plastic, 3d-printed and sheet metal parts. And because Navel is a deep-tech solution, also from a lot of electronics, sensors, motors and cables.
We are looking for a motivated student to help us produce the first small batch of our social robot Navel.

Your tasks
Focus on:

  • Assembly
  • Soldering

Depending on your skills, other activities in the robot development environment are also possible.

Your skills

  • You should be confident with screwdrivers and soldering irons.
  • Fine motor skills are required.
  • You should be able to understand complex systems, identify problems and name suggestions for improvement.

Working hours
approx. 8h per week

Remuneration
We pay a fair salary.

Want to learn more about this position?
Please just contact us at job@navelrobotics.com

Our team is characterized by:

Attention to detail
Often it’s the details you have to see and understand first to find the right solution.

Brave courage
We often work on things we’ve never done before, and don’t hesitate even when things are supposed to be difficult.

Pragmatic solutions
Even though we value academic background knowledge, what counts in the end is the finished solution that works.

Persistence
Even if we work in an agile way, we get through thirsty phases and think long-term.

Flexibility & Universality
In our small team, we work on diverse topics. A deep basic understanding gets us further in this than a very pointed expertise.

Speed
We master our tools and not the other way around. Our overview and focus ensure our efficiency.

Clarity
Complexity comes naturally. Clear structures and clean code let us control complexity efficiently.

Cleverness
The faster we understand where the problem is, the faster we find the smart solution.

Knowledge
Because we know the basics in our sleep, we can focus on the exciting challenges.

Communication
In an interdisciplinary team, successful communication is sometimes challenging and at the same time essential.