Starting Date: November 1st, 2019 – February 1st, 2020.
Duration: 2 years and up to 4 years.
Funding: The H2020 ICT SPRING Project
Contact Point: Xavier Alameda-Pineda
To apply: https://jobs.inria.fr/public/classic/fr/offres/2019-02082
General Context: SPRING – Socially Pertinent Robots in Gerontological Healthcare – is a 4-year R&D project fully funded by the European Comission under the H2020 framework. SPRING aims to develop socially assistive robots with the capacity of performing multi-person interactions and open-domain dialogue. The scientific objective of SPRING is to develop a novel paradigm and novel concept of socially-aware robots, and to conceive innovative methods and algorithms for computer vision, audio processing, sensor-based control, and spoken dialog systems based on modern statistical- and deep-learning to ground the required social robot skills. The technological objective of SPRING is to create and launch a brand new generation of robots that are flexible enough to adapt to the needs of the users, and not the other way around. The experimental objective of SPRING is twofold: to validate the technology based on HRI experiments in a gerontology hospital, and to assess its acceptability by patients and medical staff.
The project gathers academic and industrial partners in Italy (Università degli Study di Trento), Czech Republic (České Vysoké Učenı́ Technické v Praze), UK (Heriot-Watt University), Israel (Bar-Ilan University), Spain (PAL Robotics) and France (ERM Automatismes Industriels, Assistance Public Hôpitaux de Paris, and Inria). Frequent travel to visit partners is required (up to 5 times a year).
Mission: The Perception team offers a development engineer position to work in the field of deep learning for multi-modal human-robot interaction. The recruited engineer will have the following missions: develop robot-aimed advanced deep learning software based on state-of-the-art neural network architectures; assist the team researchers to implement their algorithms on the various robotic platforms; ensure software robustness and re-usability; prepare software to collect data using the robot; maintain the software of the robotic platforms, exploiting the ROS middleware. The recruited engineer will work in close collaboration with the group members (two senior researchers, 4-5 PhD students and three development engineers) and with the SPRING partners.
Main Activities:
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- Develop machine learning software that is robust and re-usable, based on the software prototypes developed in the team.
- Advise PhD students, researchers and other developers on how to implement their methods for running on robotic platforms.
- Manage the robotic platforms (update software and oversee the hardware).
Sought Expertise: The candidates should have strong expertise in deep learning framework development (Keras, PyTorch), excellent programming skills in Python and C++. Expertise in using the Robotics Operating System, good knowledge of cooperative software development (Git, CI, testing, …), strong Linux background (command line, system architecture), and fluency in both written and spoken English is highly welcome.
