We are Universe Energy, and we are the battery dismantling and sorting company.
The world needs 2 billion batteries by 2050 to make electric cars and power the grids. But we need to mine 30x more, leading to a $10 Trillion supply gap. We help EV OEMs, battery makers, and service centers make $1500 on a used battery pack by remanufacturing and repurposing them instead of letting them pay $750 for recycling. We dismantle, inspect, and grade used battery packs 90% cheaper and 6x faster using robotics, computer vision, and machine learning. We will deploy a fleet of 50 dismantling & sorting systems in shipping containers on-site to process 200k battery packs/year by 2030. Our mission is to unlock reuse as the primary source of the next 100 million batteries by 2050, powering a truly clean energy transition. We keep 5 TWh in battery capacity alive, reduce 6 Gigatons CO2, and save 125 billion liters of freshwater per year.
The Robot dismantles batteries.
We are building a cognitive robot that will automatically diagnose, discharge, and disassemble EV batteries using robotic manipulation, autonomous controls, and computer vision. The first-generation robotic system will automatically assess the battery’s state of health, remove covers from arbitrary battery packs (500 kg), and perform safe discharging. It then disassembles these batteries from the pack level (500 kg) down to the module level (25 kg). The robot can take batteries apart 4x faster and safer than a human at 6x the throughput, leading to 50% lower unit economics.
Job objective
You will architect, engineer, and deploy the robotics software that plans all actions to perform battery disassembly of incoming battery packs. It involves designing software integration of controls, perception functions, and path planning. You will develop all ranges of robotic actions to disassemble batteries including disassembly sequence planning, path planning, and collision avoidance using perception. You will design control systems to integrate industrial robotic systems and gantry-based motion systems to enable the automated battery disassembly process. You will architect the controls for end-effectors to provide all ranges of disassembly actions. You will validate these functions in simulation and the real world with force controls and feedback.
How you will contribute
- Deliver the robotic software system & infrastructure by integrating path planning, control software, and image recognition.
- Develop a control software to deploy all functionalities in the robotic system from path planning, positioning, and controlling end-effectors with inverse kinematics.
- Make a selection through trade studies of industrial robotic systems (like Fanuc, Kuka, ABB, Comau), design gantry-based motion systems, and industrial PLC controllers.
- Develop control & path planning algorithms for end-effectors and their motion planning and control algorithms. Integrate force control sensors and implement sensor fusion methods.
- Contribute to the robustness and stability of the robotic system by verifying and validating software pipelines through hardware-in-the-loop testing.
- Integrate, prototype, and test industrial robot systems. Export control routines from robotics simulation software to embedded devices.
The skills & experience that you bring
- At least a B.Sc. in Electrical-, Mechanical-, Controls Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a similar field.
- Academic background in control theory, sensor fusion, digital signal processing, robotic motion planning, inverse kinematics, collision detection, and avoidance.
- Expert in robotic path planning, trajectory smoothing, and feedback controls within a real production, automation, or manufacturing environment.
- 3-5 yrs experience in designing control algorithms applied to Classical, Multivariable Feedback, Model Predictive, and/or Nonlinear controls.
- 3-5 yrs developing software from architecture to production-level code in industrial environments, like assembly lines, industrial robotics, and CNC machines.
- 3+ yrs experience in developing software with strong skills in C/C++, Python, and Matlab-Simulink and have developed software from architecture to production-level code in robotic environments.
- 3+ yrs hands-on product experience with industrial articulated robots like Kuka, Fanuc, ABB, and Staubli while performing calibration and motion control on these systems.
- 3+ yrs experience in robotic software development and simulation in ROS, ROS-I, MoveIt for path planning and inverse Kinematics, Gazebo, and/or RobotStudio for simulation.
- Developed and integrated safety-critical features for collision avoidance and collaborative actions with humans on industrial or mobile robots.
- 1+ yrs Experience with OpenCV, Open3D, and PCL libraries.
How to hit a homerun
- Deep reinforcement learning applied to robotic control systems and path planning.
- Hands-on experience processing rich sensor data from LIDAR, RADAR, and cameras.
- Industrial PLC programming experience.
