2 PhD calls by Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Italy

International Doctoral Programme in Emerging Digital Technologies
http://www.sssup.it/ist_context.jsp?ID_LINK=10945&area=199

Biorobotics
http://www.sssup.it/ist_context.jsp?ID_LINK=10832&area=199

PhD and Postdoc positions in whole-body motion at University of Birmingham, UK

Research dynamic models and control methodologies for whole-body motion
with external contact interactions in humans and humanoid robots. ****

*PhD and Postdoc positions available at the University of Birmingham* -****

You will work as part of the European FP7 project CoDyCo (codyco.eu). The
University of Birmingham is among a consortium of leading European labs
including IIT in Italy, UPMC in France, TU Darmstadt in Germany, and JSI in
Slovenia.****

At Birmingham you will be a member of the IRLab, a group with six faculty,
seven research fellows and fifteen research students. The lab has state of
the art equipment with access to a wide range of advanced platforms for
mobility and manipulation (
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/groupings/robotics/).****

You will also be part of the Centre for Computation Neuroscience and
Cognitive Robotics (
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research...ncr/index.aspx), with
additional equipment for motion analysis and psychophysics.****

PhD applicants should have a Bachelors or Master?s degree in Computer
Science, Engineering (Mechanical, Electrical, or Bio), Mathematics, or
Physics. You should have excellent mathematical and coding skills, and have
graduated in the top 5% of your class.****

For the Postdoc position, you should have a PhD in Computer Science,
Engineering (Mechanical, Electrical, or Bio), Mathematics, Physics,
Psychology, or Neurosciences. You should also have skills and a research
record in human experimentation, biomechanics, modelling, and analysis.
Coding skills are a plus.****

To apply, first contact Michael Mistry (m.n.mistry@bham.ac.uk), with your
CV and transcript. Put ?CoDyCo PhD application" or ?CoDyCo PostDoc
application" as appropriate in the subject line.****

Deadline for applications is the 15th November 2013, and late applications
may be considered

[font]PostDoc Opening at LIRMM
Montpellier: Design of safety compliant behavior for humanoids in haptic interaction


[font]Laboratory: LIRMM (CNRS/University Montpellier 2), Montpellier, France
Department: Robotics Department
Duration: 24 months (starting as soon as possible).
Topic: Design of safety compliant behavior for humanoids in haptic interaction


In the frame of the ROMEO 2 French national project lead by ALDEBARAN, the topic of this postdoctoral position is to model and program active compliance behaviors of a humanoid robot in haptic interaction with the environment or a human. Tasks carried out in contact with the environment or humans call de-facto for safety issues. Not only should the human partner not be harmed in any situation, but the robot must also ensure its own safety (since the human can be a strong source of perturbation to the robot). This challenging problem is of prime importance. While studies in particular at DLR in Germany have considered this issue in previous (PHRIENDS, VIACTORS) and current (SAPHARI) European projects, none of them has considered the problem of safety in human-humanoid interaction that is linked to the potential of falling with a human. Of course fundamentals in terms of admissible impedance, impulse forces, compliant hardware reported in robotic safety will be considered. But addition
al ones, namely humanoid falling when being in close physical contact with a human, calls for a different approach in terms of reflex strategies and the control that is to be implemented in addition to non-harming contacts in direct interaction. We will investigate a set of strategies to guarantee safety of the haptic interaction in most critical circumstances. Aldebaran partner will provide knowledge related to norms and standards to be considered and will use the results of this project to improve the understanding of this very new kind of man-machine interaction. A lot has been told about safety in robotics but real experiments with humanoids are still missing, and this research will bring new valid data into the discussion. In order to do so, we will identify situations where the motion is not viable (i.e. the interaction is not controllable) and having human-in-the-loop adds difficulty to this process. Assuming this, we will propose taxonomy of these critical situations and dev
ise for each a set of rules/guidelines/policies to avoid it and another set of rules/guidelines/policies to deal with it in conjunction with the available norms and standards.

These research and developments must be demonstrated in challenging domestic environments and human assist scenarios involving Aldebaran?s ROMEO and Kawada?s HRP-4 humanoid robots.

Locations: the postdoc will be conducted at the CNRS-UM2 LIRMM at Montpellier, France. The LIRMM Robotics Department is organized in 5 project-teams, covering research in automatics, signal and image processing, and mechanical design. Specifically, the ROMEO 2 project is carried out by the IDH (Interactive Digital Humans) team, along with various other cutting-edge French research laboratories, and with industrial partner Aldebaran. Montpellier (population 265000), located in southern France, is the capital of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, as well as the fastest growing city in France over the past 25 years. The city is situated on hilly ground only 10 kilometers inland from the Mediterranean coast. The monthly mean temperature ranges from 7.1 ?C in January to 23.4 ?C in July.

Interested candidates shall send a detailed CV with a short motivation letter to the following advisory team:

Philippe Fraisse fraisseATlirmm.fr
Abderrahmane Kheddar kheddarATgmail.com

----
Andrea Cherubini
Associate Professor
LIRMM / Universit? de Montpellier 2[/font][/font]