Netherlands: PHD POSITION ON "AUTOMATIC ANALYSIS OF HUMAN GROUP BEHAVIOR IN THE PRESENCE OF ROBOTS"

Deadline: 15 October 2013

The challenge
The HMI group of the University of Twente is looking for a PhD candidate who will work on the automatic analysis of the behavior of small groups of humans, both in and without the presence of mobile telepresence robots. The research will be conducted in the context of the European TERESA project, which aims at developing a robot that can navigate through public spaces. The proposed PhD position consists of two parts: (1) the quantitative and qualitative analysis of human group behavior, including the recognition of group membership, formation and activity; and (2) the transfer of this knowledge to robot navigation behavior, to be evaluated in ethnographic user studies. This should lead to a notion of socially normative robot behavior. For the first part, the candidate will develop algorithms to automatically analyze small groups from RGB+depth cameras. The aim is to detect group activity and group formation from estimated human positions, orientation and other cues. These automatic analyses should form the basis for the second part, to derive the navigation behavior for a mobile telepresence robot. The candidate will conduct longitudinal user studies to assess whether the robot's behavior is perceived as natural and appropriate. The work encompasses a range of tasks covering technological innovation as well as user studies. Specifically, the PhD candidate: will work on the design and implementation of scientifically novel algorithms for human group detection and behavior analysis. The candidate will make and annotate recordings to train and evaluate recognition models; will conduct user studies to investigate proper robot behavior for the avoidance, entrance and membership of groups of humans. These studies will be partly conducted in French elderly homes; will work in close collaboration with the other researchers in the TERESA project towards a fully working navigation robot; will present research results to the scientific community in major international conferences and relevant journals.
Your profile
The PhD candidate: has fluent command of English as a written and spoken language. Fluency in Dutch or French is a plus. has a MSc degree with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Vision. Candidates with a particularly strong background in only one of these are also encouraged to apply. has a broad interest in different facets of the topic, including human-robot interaction, computer vison and social signal processing. Please send your application with your CV, motivation letter and letters of recommendation through the application link before October 15, 2013. Further information about the PhD position can be given by Prof. Vanessa Evers (email: v.evers@utwente.nl) and Dr. Ronald Poppe (r.w.poppe@utwente.nl).