This position is offered at the INRIA Grenoble Rhone-Alpes Research Center of INRIA, located near Grenoble (South-Eastern part of France). Over 700 people are working there within 34 research groups and 10 support services. The candidate will be a member of the E-MOTION research group, working under Dr. Thierry Fraichard's guidance
The position is for three years and should start between September and December 2010. The starting salary for a Ph.D is 1947,80 Euros gross/month (including standard health coverage).
Robotic systems come in a great variety of types and shapes (mobile platforms, humanoids, vehicles, etc.). In all cases, they have to move to perform whatever tasks have been assigned to them (pick an object, move to this location, monitor that area, etc.). Motion is therefore a key issue for robotic systems and it has been largely addressed in the past forty years. Until recently, the focus was primarily to avoid collision with the objects of the environment and to optimize a motion-related criterion (travel distance, travel time, energy consumption, etc.). Nowadays, robotic systems are increasingly moving among and interacting with human beings. The presence of people has an impact on the way robots should move: you do not move around a person the way you would around a piece of furniture. In general, when one interacts with a human being (to avoid him, to salute him, to pass him an object, etc.), one obeys a number of rules that has to do with the notion of Personal Space. These rules that fall under what anthropologists refer to as Proxemics [1] must be identified and integrated in the navigation scheme of robotic systems so that their behaviour resemble that of a person thus facilitating the integration of robots in human-populated environments and their acceptance.
This Ph.D is in the scope of an INRIA research initiative called "Personally Assisted Living" (PAL) whose broader purpose is to develop technologies useful to assist disabled and old person in their daily lives. In this framework, E-MOTION is seeking to develop an automated wheelchair that could operate autonomously in indoor and outdoor environments among people. The purpose of this Ph.D is to tackle this human-aware navigation problem. It will require first to identify the rules that should be obeyed by the robotic system in a number of selected situations. Second a navigation scheme that integrate such rules will have to be developed. The navigation scheme proposed will be evaluated on a robotic wheelchair in the experimental environments available in the PAL initiative.
Interested candidates holding a Master degree in Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, or other related fields are invited to apply for admission. Fluency in English is required and knowledge of French is a plus. The candidate should be experienced in software development in C++ language under Linux. Any additional experience in Robotics research will be a plus.
To apply please send a detailed CV, a statement of motivation, reference letters, degree certificates, transcripts of grades and ranking information plus any additional support material to Dr. Thierry Fraichard (thierry.fraichard@inria.fr). International applications are encouraged and will receive logistic support with visa issues, relocation, etc.
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Last updated on Thursday August 26th, 2010 |
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