PhD student position in Electronics and Software Design with an orientation towards Interactive Robotics

Research topic: Failure Detection and Recovery
This PhD-position is part of the INTRO project (INTeractive RObotics Research Network) which in total offers 10 positions in the interdisciplinary areas of Interactive Robotics; Cooperative Robot Learning, Cognitive Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and Intelligent Interface Design. INTRO (www.introbotics.eu) is funded by the European Commission as part of the FP7 program and involves 6 partners: Umea University, Sweden; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany; University West of England, England; Space Applications Services, Belgium, and Robosoft, France.

To promote mobility, the following rules apply to the offered position at UWE: The applicant must not be a national of UK unless the applicant holds also another nationality, and has not resided in UK during the previous 5 years. At the time of appointment, the applicant must not have resided or carried out his/her main activity in UK for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to his/her appointment. Exceptions are given if the applicant has legally resided and had his/her main activity in a non–Associated third country for at least 3 of the last 4 years immediately prior to his/her appointment.

The PhD student will join a training program in close cooperation with researchers from all partners. The network-wide training program includes a research project, courses, seminars, and workshops. In the research project, the PhD student will investigate safety of all interfaces and robot actions developed by the Ben Gurion University (BGU). The project includes development of “failure-directed design” principles of software algorithms/protocols for multimodal sensory monitoring. Objectives are to identify safety functionality relevant to the robotic application (“safety behaviour”), and achieve high reliability and integrity of the robotic system. An integration of this project results will be made with robot platforms from Space Applications (Belgium) and interface models developed by BGU. One part of the project will be conducted at BGU in Israel. This position will be initially funded for 24 months.

Applicants should preferably have an MSc degree or similar in control or software engineering or some other field relevant for the position. The applicant needs to be skilled in both oral and written communication in English, be able to work independently as well as in collaboration with others. Experience in robotics, image processing and signal processing are merits. Experience and knowledge in programming are needed. The application should contain a CV, academic grades, a copy of degree project report and any publications, two personal references and one A4 sheet describing the personal motivation for applying for this position.

Anticipated start date is 1st of September 2010 or earlier.

Questions about the position will be answered by Dr Sanja Dogramadzi, e-mail: Sanja.Dogramadzi_at_uwe.ac.uk
Your complete application, marked with reference number MCF-2 should be sent to HR@uwe.ac.uk by April 15, 2010 at the latest. We look forward to receiving your application!