The Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRI), CSIC-UPC is seeking a predoctoral researcher to work under the framework of the DROVIC project (Driving the Adoption of Data Flows in the Supply Chain by Integrating Intelligent and Decentralized Control for Large-Scale Part Manufacturing)

The candidate will be supervised by Dr. Adrià Colomé, Prof. Carme Torras, and Dr. Fares J. Abu-Dakka and will work in cooperation with the members of the Perception and Manipulation group at IRI.


ABOUT IRI:
IRI is a Joint University Research Institute participated by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) that conducts research in human-centered robotics and automatic control. The institute is a key player in the Spanish robotics and automatic control scenes, and a valued participant in a large number of collaborations including several ongoing European projects.

ABOUT THE POSITION:
The candidate will do research in Variable Impedance Control (VIC) conditioned on language instructions, vision and user preferences within the project DROVIC (Data-driven Robot Variable Impedance Control with Context Awareness).

DROVIC aims to bridge the disparity between high-level instructions in large AI models for robotics, and low-level robot execution. This will be tackled by building a common features framework for variable impedance controllers to understand different kinds of inputs, such as language, proprioceptive information (vision, forces, etc.) and user preferences. This will allow for a context aware definition of such controllers and their reference, taking user preferences into account naturally. The theoretical results will be implemented with Franka robots in assistive robotics scenarios and/or manipulation of non-rigid or fragile objects.

Contract
- Start date: Fall 2025
- Type of contract: Full time
- The candidate will do a research stay in NYU Abu Dhabi, and potentially a second 3-months stay in another European research centre.
- Salary in accordance with CSIC salary scales and commensurate with the experience of the candidate

Contacts

Please, send your documentation before 03/10/2025 to: jobs (at) iri.upc.edu Important!: Remember to reference the offer (ID-149) and include the following documentation: CV and academic transcripts