[robocup-worldwide] One fully funded research grant at the Laboratory of Robotics and Engineering Systems (LARSyS)

[Rodrigo Ventura]

(please redistribute; apologies for cross-postings)

Dear all,

Applications are invited for one fully funded research grant at the Laboratory of Robotics and Engineering Systems (LARSyS, http://larsys.pt), Portugal. In particular, the studentship will be based on the LARSyS members Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (Madeira-ITI, http://m-iti.org) and on Institute for Systems and Robotics - Lisboa (ISR-Lisboa, http://isr.tecnico.ulisboa.pt).

This research grant targets highly motivated students interested in pursuing a PhD degree. The research produced during this grant is expected to contribute for a successful fully funded PhD studentship application to a Doctoral program of University of Madeira and/or University of Lisbon.

Project Summary: The teleoperation of field robots poses several challenges to end users in terms of workload and situation awareness (e.g. depth perception, orientation) that limit human performance. In addition, operators usually have to perform several tasks simultaneously which is another factor that influences their performance. The use of Attentive User Interfaces (AUI) that sense the user’s attention is a good solution as they automatically adjust themselves to maximize user performance. This adjustment is based on the live monitoring of the user’s state such as the emotional, physical and mental states of the users, which might be inferred based on the physiological and behavioral information collected from the user and may play an important role in their performance. Consequently, coupling the interface behavior with user’s states (called Physiologically Attentive User Interface - PAUI) is fundamental to enable better user performance. This project aims at inferring knowledge about the user emotional, mental and physical state and the overall situation to create PAUI that optimizes the way information is presented to users and the way the user will be able to interact with the system. The proposed approach will be piloted in the particular context of teleoperation of field robots.

Goals: The successful candidate is expected to produce an infrastructure for PAUI development for field robot teleoperation that improves user’s performance. The resulting PAUIs will optimize both information acquisition (i.e. emotional, physical and mental user’s states and user’s goals) and user interaction.

This grant will be supervised by Prof. José Luis Silva (Madeira-ITI and ISCTE-IUL), Prof. Sergi Bermudez i Badia (Madeira-ITI and UMa), and Prof. Rodrigo Ventura (ISR-Lisboa and IST).


Partners: LARSyS (http://larsys.pt) develops interdisciplinary research in Robotics and Engineering Systems, covering dynamical cyber-physical systems, human computer interaction and social-technical systems, as well as policy research dealing with uncertainty and risk governance. Our activities consider new horizons for knowledge with impact in ocean, urban, aeronautic and space, biomedical, and future working environments, as well as to stimulate new industry-science relations. LARSyS brings together four R&D units, involving the University of Lisbon (through IST-Instituto Superior Técnico) and the University of Madeira (http://uma.pt).

The Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (Madeira-ITI) is a not-for-profit innovation of the University of Madeira, founded by the University of Madeira, Madeira Tecnopolo (http://www.madeiratecnopolo.pt/), and Carnegie Mellon University (http://www.cmu.edu/). The institute was created in December 2009 in order to provide a home for the numerous collaborations between these partners, in both research and education. Madeira-ITI is active in numerous Research & Development projects in collaboration with both academic and industrial partners and operates in the interdisciplinary domain of human-computer interaction encapsulating contributions from computer science, psychology and design in order to address and engage in important scientific and technological challenges that are both relevant to society and have significant economic impact.


The ISR-Lisboa (http://isr.tecnico.ulisboa.pt) is home to more than 40 PhDs and it is engaged in a new generation of research challenges pushing the frontiers of knowledge, while offering world-class doctoral training with top universities (e.g. dual/joint degrees with MIT, EPFL, CMU) and fueling the collaboration with industry. ISR-Lisboa develops state-of- the-art engineering solutions and projects with a clear societal impact, and has a long track record of participation in EU and other international projects. ISR-Lisboa hosts 5 groups working in Robotics and Information Processing, Systems and Control Theory, Signal Processing, Computer Vision, Optimization, Intelligent Systems and Biomedical Engineering.

Requirements: the candidates are expected to have a MSc or equivalent degree with strong background in computer science, robotics, human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. Good programming skills are also expected. The working language is English, so good written and oral communication skills are also required.

Application:
	Deadline: 15-Nov-2016
	Duration: 9 months (full time)
	Salary: In accordance with FCT (Portuguese national funding agency for science, research and technology) regulation.
	Starting date: January, 2017

To request further information and to apply, send an email to jose.l.silva at m-iti.org as soon as possible. Please include a CV, a statement of interest, and any supporting documents you may consider helpful.

Best regards,

Rodrigo Ventura
Institute for Systems and Robotics
Instituto Superior Técnico
Lisbon, Portugal
http://users.isr.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/~yoda