PhD Research Position in Intelligent IT for Robotics at University Politehnica of Bucharest

PhD Research Position in Intelligent IT for Robotics at University Politehnica of Bucharest.

PhD in Rumania, this Rumanis Sholarship.

Overview

The Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers (A&C), part of the most important technical university in Romania ‐ the University Politehnica of Bucharest ‐ is the coordinator of the FP7‐REGPOT‐2010‐1 ERRIC Project (www.erric.eu), the main objective of which is to empower existing excellence in research by unlocking its significant research potential and enhancing its national and regional leadership position in selected areas of Intelligent Information Technologies (IIT). Throughout this project, fostering high quality research in the area of A&C expertise "Cognitive and Collaborative IT for Service Oriented Robotics and Manufacturing" will lead to a comprehensive and sustainable integration of A&C into the wider European Research Area context. The A&C research laboratories group more than 120 people and dispose of several experimental platforms. The person to be hired will be integrated in the Robotics and AI Laboratory and will perform research and development activities within the SORM team (Service Oriented Robotics and Manufacturing) which comprises eight academic staff and twelve Ph.D. students.

Research activities will be carried out at the premises of the SORM team of A&C but in close collaboration with other researchers from the EU strategic partners of the ERRIC project, including short research visits to these universities.

The duration of the posts is 24 months, starting the 1st of September 2011 (or later). During this period the researcher will be employed by University Politehnica of Bucharest under a full‐time fixed‐term contract with full social security coverage.

Mission

In the frame of the ERRIC project, the experienced researcher will perform research in the field of human‐robot (HR) skills emulation: learning from visual modelling and interpretation of gestures; cognitive learning for dexterous task reproducing; surface generation through procedural motion planning and local tool shape operators. In this respect, the experienced researcher will be deeply involved in design and implementing activities, and should develop new methods, algorithms and programs for: learning by showing, vision‐based gesture modelling and mapping into motion patterns, 3D‐surface generation from depth map part and tool description. He should also develop new software applications and integrate them to existing ones. Together with the SORM team, he should publish research results in scientific journals.

Principal activities

Studies, development and deployment of intelligent robot applications for human skills emulation

Take initiative and develop software for visual gesture modelling, mapping to robot motion patterns, surface generation with visual tool compensation
Manage the deployment of specific IIT solutions
Provide knowledge and know‐how transfer (participate in the training of Ph.D. students)
Share and valorise the approaches, methods and tools developed
Contribute to the creation of an international working environment for the SORM team
Enhance the efficiency, proficiency, and visibility of R&D results and capacity of innovation of the SORM team at EU level
Edit the scientific description of the developments and publish in journals and conference proceedings, including the annual ERRIC Workshops

Competences

Skills in programming languages : C, C++
Knowledge in advanced robot motion control: procedural motion, multitasking, vision guidance, redundancy management