Lead Research Scientist - Autonomous Robotics Systems at FM in Luxembourg

Job description

Established nearly two centuries ago, FM is a leading mutual insurance company whose capital, scientific research capability and engineering expertise are solely dedicated to property risk management and the resilience of its policyholder-owners. These owners, who share the belief that the majority of property loss is preventable, represent many of the world’s largest organizations, including one of every four Fortune 500 companies. They work with FM to better understand the hazards that can impact their business continuity to make cost-effective risk management decisions, combining property loss prevention with insurance protection. The Automation and Intelligent Systems Research Team develops science-based knowledge and practical guidance for the safe, reliable, and resilient adoption of emerging industrial technologies. Autonomous robotics is changing how industrial facilities move materials, inspect assets, monitor hazards, and respond to abnormal conditions. These systems can reduce exposure by reaching hazardous or inaccessible locations, but they can also introduce new mechanical, electrical, fire, cyber-physical, operational, and business-interruption risks. This role will build the evidence required to identify these risks and develop effective mitigation strategies. As Lead Researcher in Autonomous Robotics Systems, you will define and lead applied research on autonomous mobile robots, automated guided vehicles, quadrupeds, humanoids, drones where appropriate, robotic manipulators, fleet-management systems, and related sensing and control infrastructure. You will evaluate both sides of the robotics risk equation: hazards introduced by autonomous systems and robotics applications that can detect, assess, or mitigate property loss. You will combine hands-on laboratory and field-oriented experimentation with systems engineering, hazard analysis, reliability and resilience assessment, scientific publication, and translation of evidence into practical guidance for engineering, underwriting, approvals, claims, and client-facing stakeholders. Own and deliver a multi-year applied research portfolio on autonomous robotics in industrial environments, aligned with FM property-loss and business-continuity priorities. Characterize robotic architectures, operating modes, autonomy levels, fleet orchestration, dependencies, failure modes, and interactions with buildings, equipment, stock, utilities, people, and other automated systems. Design and execute rigorous experiments on physical robots and testbeds, supported by simulation, digital twins, hardware-in-the-loop methods, and representative industrial scenarios. Develop repeatable methods to assess mechanical, electrical, battery and charging, ignition, collision, dropped-load, navigation, communications, localization, software, cyber-physical, common-mode, and cascading risks. Evaluate reliability, availability, maintainability, resilience, safe degradation, emergency stopping, recovery, manual fallback, and business-continuity performance under normal and off-nominal conditions. Investigate how robotics can improve risk identification and mitigation through remote inspection, situational awareness, anomaly detection, hazardous-area access, post-event assessment, and response support. Integrate sensors, perception, localization and mapping, navigation, control, edge computing, communications, robot middleware, fleet-management software, and industrial or digital-twin platforms. Create evidence-based recommendations, test protocols, risk taxonomies, evaluation tools, operating guidance, and inputs to standards or approval criteria. Lead collaborations with FM stakeholders, clients, universities, manufacturers, integrators, laboratories, and standards organizations while protecting research independence and data governance. Publish and present high-quality research, track emerging deployments at industrial facilities, and represent FM in relevant scientific and standards communit