[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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