[alife] Research Assistant / Research Fellow in Developmental Social Robotics
Chrystopher Nehaniv
nehaniv at googlemail.com
Thu Feb 28 16:20:18 PST 2008
Jobs at University of Hertfordshire
Research Assistant/Research Fellow in Developmental Social Robotics
School of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and Information
Sciences
18,700 - 25,800 British pounds per annum, depending on
qualifications, skills and experience
Three years fixed term contract
Applications from postgraduate/postdoctoral candidates are invited for
a full-time research assistantship or research fellowship in
developmental social robotics. The post offers the opportunity to work
within the Adaptive Systems Research Group, a proactive and dynamic
research team with an excellent international research profile. You
will work in the European project ITALK (Integration and Transfer of
Action and Language Knowledge in Robot). The ITALK project aims to
develop artificial embodied agents able to acquire complex
behavioural, cognitive, and linguistic skills through individual and
social learning. This will be achieved through the development of
cognitive robots that learn to handle and manipulate objects and tools
autonomously, to cooperate and communicate with other robots and
humans, and to adapt their abilities to changing internal,
environmental, and social conditions. The main hypothesis behind the
project is that the parallel development of action, conceptualization
and social interaction permits the enhancement of language
capabilities, which on their part enrich cognitive development. This
is possible through the integration and transfer of knowledge and
cognitive processes involved in sensorimotor learning and the
construction of action categories, imitation and other forms of social
learning, the acquisition of grounded conceptual representations and
the development of the grammatical structure of language. Such a
developmental approach towards the integration of action,
conceptualization, social interaction and language has fundamental
technological implications for designing communication in robots and
overcoming current limitations of natural language interfaces and
human-robot communication systems. Different partners in the highly
interdisciplinary project consortium cooperate closely in the study of
different aspects of this challenging work.
The research team at University of Hertfordshire is involved in the
development of software and algorithms that will contribute to the
development of complex, compositional and hierarchical behaviour and
communication via scaffolded social learning, involving the use of
deixis, gesture, reference, negation, imitation, and constructional
grounding in embodied human-robot interaction. Processes centering on
social learning play an important part in child development in the
emergence of linguistic, communicative, and cognitive competencies,
and computational algorithms will be developed to study these issues
using leading-edge child-sized humanoid robot platforms (KASPAR http://kaspar.feis.herts.ac.uk/
and the iCub http://www.robotcub.org/) available in the group. The
work will use the facilities available in the Robotics and Interactive
Systems Laboratory, as part of the Adaptive Systems Research Group at
University of Hertfordshire which has a strong research record in
adaptive behaviour, artificial life, and robot-human interaction. The
research involves: a) investigating developmental models for language
and communication relying on imitation and social interaction, and
their relation to cognition and behavioural scaffolding b) Dealing
with the sensori-motor loop of the robot (programming, interfacing
sensors and operating actuators), c) designing, conducting and
statistically analysing human-robot interacting studies into the
development of behavioural and linguistic competences, d) writing and
presenting scientific publications and reports documenting the work.
You are expected to have excellent qualifications and experience in
biologically-inspired research, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial
Life, Machine Learning, Mobile Robotics, or related disciplines. A
specialist postgraduate degree or PhD, or other strong evidence of
research experience is required, as well as excellent skills in
presenting research and writing scientific documents in English. You
should also be very motivated to working in an interdisciplinary and
European research team.
Informal enquiries can be made to Prof. Chrystopher L. Nehaniv (C.L.Nehaniv at herts.ac.uk
).
See also: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/02/28/scirobot128.xml
Closing date: 20 March 2008 Quote Reference: EN8399AC
Start Date: April 2008 or later
The University offers a range of benefits including a final salary
pension scheme, professional development, family friendly policies,
child care vouchers, waiving of course fees for the children of staff
at UH, discounted memberships at the Hertfordshire Sports Village and
generous annual leave.
Apply online at http://recruitment.herts.ac.uk/recruit or request an
application pack from Human Resources on +44-(0)1707 284802 (24hr
voicemail), quoting the appropriate reference number.
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