Netherlands: PhD position on Human-Robot Interaction within the European project SQUIRREL

Deadline: 21 Jan. 2014

Job description

The PhD candidate will have the following tasks:

• carry out various user studies and experiments with children aged 4-12 to identify and evaluate effective robot behaviors

• qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data captured in the user studies

• design new robot behaviors that will be integrated in an engaging game in the course of the project

• publish and present results in (international) conferences, workshops and relevant journals

• closely collaborate with the European partners in the SQUIRREL project

• work together with another PhD candidate on the project who analyses the nonverbal vocal behavior of the interactions to understand how well they are going.

The Human Media Interaction Group at University of Twente in Enschede/Netherlands (hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/) is looking for a PhD candidate to work on human-robot interaction with children within the European project SQUIRREL (Clearing Clutter Bit by Bit). The aim of the 4-year PhD project is to create a socially aware robot that is able to interact with small groups of children and engage them in object sorting games (i.e., cleaning up a room). In order to design effective robot behaviors, the PhD candidate will conduct user studies with robots and children and develop a game that motivates children to complete the task.

For further information about the PhD position please contact Dr. Manja Lohse (m.lohse@utwente.nl) and Prof. Dr. Vanessa Evers (email: v.evers@utwente.nl).