PhD Position in Human-Robot Teamwork @ Delft University of Technology

At Delft University of Technology, we are looking for a PhD candidate with a background in computer science/Artificial Intelligence, experience with semantic web languages and ontology design, and experience with human-robot interaction. 

Faculty/department Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Level Master degree
Maximum employment Maximum of 38 hours per week (1 FTE)
Duration of contract 4 years
Salary scale €2174 to €2779 per month gross

The PhD project is part of the EU project Long-Term Human-Robot Teaming for Robot-Assisted Disaster Response (TRADR; seehttp://www.tradr-project.eu/). 

Using a human-centred design methodology, we develop decision support for human-robot teams to assist in disaster response efforts over multiple sorties during a mission. Semantic web technologies will be used to make the experience of the team persistent and to support establishing situation awareness within a team of human operators and robots over multiple, possibly asynchronous sorties. An ontological knowledge base and agent-based reasoning mechanisms are being developed to harmonise the team's work and information processes with the available human-robot resources and the dynamic context of these sorties. 

The focus of the PhD will be on the development of tools to enhance team awareness and to support coordination of the human-robot team. Part of the work will therefore involve developing the display logic of a user interface for exchanging and sharing information within the team. The situational awareness tools and components will be integrated into the cognitive agent framework that supports coordination of the team. The goal of this work is to establish a more seamless interaction between robots and humans in human-robot teamwork situations. 

Deadline for application May 31. 

Please visit http://ii.tudelft.nl/?q=node/8201 for more information on how to apply. 

PhD positions in Machine Learning & Vision and for Human-Robot

The Idiap Research Institute (www.idiap.ch), a laboratory associated with  EPFL  (Swiss Federal  Institute  of  Technology, Lausanne,www.epfl.ch) seeks qualified candidates in computer vision and machine learning for multi-modal interaction modeling.

Context:The research will be conducted in the context of MuMMER (MultiModal Mall Entertainment Robot), a 4-year EU Horizon 2020 funded project involving several leading European institutions in the field. The project will develop a humanoid robot (based on Aldebaran's Pepper platform) able to engage and interact autonomously and naturally with individuals or groups or people. To support this behaviour, the project consortium will develop and integrate new methods from audiovisual scene processing, social-signal processing, high-level action selection, and human-aware robot navigation. See
http://www.mummer-project.eu/


PhD  position and requirements:The research conducted at Idiap will focus on the sensing part, but with an HRI flavor, like better accounting for robot gestures, active sensing to reduce perception uncertainties or exploiting soft priors coming from communication and dialog models, etc. Within a team of two to three PhD students/postdocs, the PhD student is expected to advance the state-of-the-art in this field. The work will be oriented towards vision/depth processing, and the modeling of upper-body and face representation for the design of head detectors/trackers, landmark or eye alignements, or non-verbal behavior extraction methods appropriate at different depth ranges like for gaze (see for instance prior work inhttp://www.idiap.ch/project/g3e/).

These work will rely on previous experience ans software developed in the context of previous projects.

The ideal Ph.D student should have a master in computer science, engineering, or applied mathematics. S/he should have a good background in mathematics, statistics, and programming (C/C++, Python). Prior experience or background in statistical learning theory, computer vision or robotics will be a plus.

The successful PhD candidate will become a doctoral student at EPFL (http://www.epfl.ch) provided that s/he is accepted by the Doctoral School at EPFL (http://phd.epfl.ch/applicants). Appointment for the PhD position is for a maximum of 4 years. Annual gross salary ranges from 48,000 CHF (first year) to 52,000 CHF (last year). The starting date is as early as possible.

Application:For more information, please contact Dr Jean-Marc Odobez (odobez@idiap.ch, www.idiap.ch/~odobez). Interested candidates should submit a cover letter, a detailed CV, and the names of three references (or recommendation letters).

About IDIAP:Idiap is an independent, non-profit research institute recognized and supported by the Swiss Government, and affiliated with the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). It is located in the town of Martigny in Valais, a scenic region in the south of Switzerland, surrounded by the highest mountains of Europe, and offering exciting recreational activities, including hiking, climbing and skiing, as well as varied cultural activities. It is within close proximity to Geneva and Lausanne. Although Idiap is located in the French part of Switzerland, English is the working language. Free French lessons are provided.

Idiap offers competitive salaries and conditions at all levels in a young, dynamic, and multicultural environment. Idiap is an equal opportunity employer and is actively involved in the "Advancement of Women in Science" European initiative.