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 PhD student will develop an adaptive interaction framework that detects and acts upon varying Interaction Quality caused by varying user abilities (either a new user or the same user with varying levels of attention or physical/cognitive fatigue). Methods to adapt robot behaviours to reflect changed user abilities, through multimodal interaction and online learning will be developed. The adaption will be facilitated through bidirectional communication using several interaction modalities, namely gestures, speech and haptics. The targeted application is robots used for physical assistance in activities of daily living, such as dressing. A secondment to Ben Gurion University will add collaborative work on interface design for learning robots. In addition, during another secondment to Umeå University, speech input will be integrated into the multi-modal interaction framework via the dialog manager.

The work will begin with data acquisition to establish user requirements, supervised by the research team of Fundació ACE. The results will be implemented on the TIAGo robot during an industrial secondment to PAL Robotics. User testing will be performed with groups of older adults at Fundació ACE under guidance and supervision of their research team and ethics committee.

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

Contacts

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