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PhD Student - Robot personalisation (MSCA ITN SOCRATES)

Date of call

26/08/2016

Deadline

15/12/2016

Responsible

Guillem Alenyà Ribas

Type

Temporary

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Description

The Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial, CSIC-UPC is seeking outstanding candidates for a PhD student position at the Perception and Manipulation Group.

SOCRATES
The recruitment is done as part of SOCRATES (SOcial Cognitive Robotic Agents in The European Society), a new Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Training Network (ETN) comprising 7 universities/research institutes: Umeå University and Örebro University in Sweden, Universität Hamburg and Fraunhofer IPA, Stuttgart in Germany, CSIC Barcelona in Spain, University West of England, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Additional non-academic partners are: Pal Robotics, Adele Robots, Alfred Nobel Science Park, Urquhart-Dykes & Lord LLP, Center for Digital Innovation, UMINOVA, Asea Brown Boveri, S.A, and Fundació ACE.

In total 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) will be recruited as PhD students for research on various aspects of interactive social robotics aiming at eldercare. The wide range of projects covers a spectrum from technical design of hardware and interaction methodology, to personalisation, user studies, and robot ethics. The unique multidisciplinary programme will train researchers with both academic and entrepreneurial spirit and expertise, well suited for a career in both academy and industry. The successful applicants will join a training program in close cooperation with researchers from all partners. The recruitment aims at a balanced gender distribution, and in particular women are encouraged to apply. The network-wide training program includes a research project, courses, seminars, and workshops. An overview of all available positions can be found at www.socrates-project.eu.

RESEARCH PROJECT
For this particular position, the candidate will develop a cognitive training robot able to physically play different games with mild dementia patients. The caregiver has to be able to choose the expected behaviour of the robot (like the degree of responsiveness, the competition/collaboration behaviour, desired level of initiative of the robot, and preferred mode of interaction (e.g., voice, visual, or robot manipulations). While playing, the robot must be able to fine tune its reactions, monitor the patient, and adapt accordingly to their evolution (for example, their cognitive or physical capacity is reduced), and the user engagement (for example, they get used to the robot).

There is little work exploring the benefits of the personalization of assistive robots to individual needs, and results have been generally limited to measures of user satisfaction and engagement. This PhD will contribute to the foundations of robot behaviour and robot personalization, developing machine learning techniques to learn and take benefit of user models and robot behaviour models, and proposing new algorithms to user-robot interaction planning.

The design will be conducted with specifications extracted from real life problems, with the help of Fundació ACE doctors. Emotion recognition will be used to further improve user models during a secondment to University of Hamburg, Germany. Furthermore, during another secondment to Fraunhofer IPA, Germany connections between hardware design personalisation will be investigated. During an industrial secondment to ABB, Spain the work will be implemented and evaluated on the YuMi robot. Additional visits to Fundació ACE, Spain will provide good opportunities for end-user testing and commercialisation.

ABOUT THE POSITION
The position includes a competitive salary for a period of three years full time research time, provided that expected study and research results are achieved. The salary will be based on the standard Marie Skłodowska-Curie Early-Stage Researcher living allowance and mobility allowance (approx. 33000 Eur gross per year), as well as family allowance, if applicable. Career exploratory allowance and travel allowances will be available. Expected starting date for the PhD position is 1st of April 2017.

DEADLINE EXTENSION: 15/12/2016

Requirements

Qualifications: The candidate is expected to have a degree/master in computer engineering, computer science, or a related field.
Experience: Experience in machine learning, and robotics are merits, as well as documented relevant programming skills.
Languages: Fluency in written and spoken English is required.
Other: Mobility rule: At the time of recruitment, the applicants must not have resided or carried out their main activity in Spain for more than 12 months during the last 3 years. Compulsory national service, work in international organisations, and short stays such as holidays are not taken into account.

Requirements to be enrolled in a Doctoral programme in Spain: 300 ECTS credits of higher education studies, including at least 60 ECTS on Master level.

Contacts

Please, send your documentation before 15/12/2016 to:

Email: jobs (at) iri.upc.edu
Address: C/ Llorens i Artigas 4-6, 2a planta. 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
Fax: 93 401 57 50
Note: Please, remember to reference the offer (ID-39) and include the following documentation:
- Introductory letter with a statement of research interest
- A curriculum vitae
- If applicable, copy of completed MSc thesis and publications
- Copies of degree certificates, including documentation of academic courses and grades
- Contact information to two persons willing to act as references