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.
The position is for up to two years and should start between September and December 2010. The salary for a PostDoc is 2607.80 Euros gross/month (including standard health coverage). For on-line application or further information, visit the website http://www.inria.fr/travailler/opportunites/postdoc/postdoc.en.html. The deadline for applications is 21 March 2010.
The design of a robotic system that can move safely in an environment featuring moving objects whose future behaviour is unknown remains a challenge. When it comes to collision avoidance, the concept of Inevitable Collision States (ICS) is useful. An ICS is a state such that no matter what the future trajectory of a robotic system is, it eventually collides with an object. This concept is general and permits to take into account the dynamics of both the robotic system and the moving objects. Clearly, for its own safety, a robotic system should never be in one of these ICS. The ICS concept was formally introduced in [1] and later exploited in a number of applications.
Characterizing the ICS set in a given situation theoretically requires information about the future evolution of the moving objects. Given the elusive nature of the future, this knowledge is difficult to obtain in practice. Prediction of the future is in order here. With prediction comes uncertainty and the primary purpose of this internship is to explore how to design a collision avoidance scheme that takes into account this uncertainty and yet strive to guarantee a given level of safety. The work will be based upon the concept of Probabilistic ICS that was recently developed [2].
This PostDoc is related to an INRIA research initiative called "Personally Assisted Living" (PAL) whose broader purpose is to develop technologies useful to assist disabled and old people 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 navigation scheme proposed will be evaluated on a robotic wheelchair in the experimental environments available in the PAL initiative.
The candidate should hold a Ph.D Degree in Robotics or Artificial Intelligence. Fluency in English is required. A certain knowledge of French is a plus. The candidate should be experienced in software development in C++ under Linux.
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Last updated on Friday February 19th, 2010 |
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