Department of Computer Science and Technology, West Cambridge
Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available strictly till 1 April 2025 (for 18-19 months depending on the starting date).
A position is available to work on an exciting multi-disciplinary project related to creating adaptive robotic social intelligence for wellbeing, with a starting date of 1 September 2023 (or the earliest thereof). The projects aims to: (1) equip (humanoid) robots with novel socio-emotional intelligence and adaptation capabilities grounded in the state of the art in affective computing, social signal processing, and machine learning fields; and (2) deploy these robots both in lab and in real world settings to enable the human users maintain and improve their health and wellbeing.
The aspect of the project the applicant will mainly work on relates to computational and/or data-driven human-robot interaction (HRI). This will involve: (i) robot behaviour learning or generation from multimodal data, and (ii) designing and undertaking HRI studies with the designed/learned models, with applications to mental (and physical) wellbeing. These will be achieved by working with the project team based in Cambridge (The Affective Intelligence and Robotics (AFAR) Lab: https://cambridge-afar.github.io/) and collaborating with the other project partners.
Essential Requirements
Candidates must have very good programming skills (e.g., Python) and analytical skills, and an interest in computational HRI. They should be open to collaborations and be self-motivated. Appointment at research associate level requires the candidate have a (or be close to completing) a PhD degree in computer science, electronic engineering, or a closely related discipline, with experience and a good (and relevant) publication record in Computational and/or Data-driven Human-Robot Interaction, Machine Learning for HRI/Robotics, or a closely related research area.