| About Inria and the job |
Inria, the French National Institute for computer science and applied mathematics, promotes “scientific excellence for technology transfer and society”. Graduates from the world’s top universities, Inria's 2,700 employees rise to the challenges of digital sciences. With its open, agile model, Inria is able to explore original approaches with its partners in industry and academia and provide an efficient response to the multidisciplinary and application challenges of the digital transformation. Inria is the source of many innovations that add value and create jobs.
Inria Nancy - Grand-Est centre, one of the eight research centres, has 430 researchers, engineers and technicians in its project teams and departments. It conducts sustained activity in the sector of information science and technologies, including computer science, applied mathematics, control engineering and multidisciplined themes situated at the crossroads between information science and technologies and other scientific areas, including life sciences, physics and human and social sciences. We also have strong commitments linked to technology transfer. Our establishment at the heart of a major cross-border region, together with our industrial and university partnerships, constitute a major advantage in achieving these commitments.
The position will be in the LARSEN team, which consists in 4 full-time researchers, 3 assistant professors, in addition to many post-docs, PhD students and research engineers. The team vision is to have robots outside of the research labs and manufacturing industries: in the real world. To reach this goal, LARSEN is developing methods to endow robots with long-term autonomy and interaction skills, taking into account the embedded and/or external sensors in the environment. These skills are grounded on physical and social interaction, machine learning, and planning under uncertainty. Experiments, especially in service and assistive robotics, are at the core of the methodology.
For more information, see: http://team.inria.fr/larsen
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| Mission |
Impressive results have been achieved in humanoid robotics thanks to recent advances in optimal control and to the increase of computational power. In particular, we can now optimize whole-body motions in real time. Nevertheless, the current methods essentially assume that the model of the robot is fully known.
The objective of this post-doc is to relax this constraint, in particular in the case of mechanical damage (e.g. a broken arm) and long-term changes of the body (e.g., a backpack). To do so, we will rely on data-efficient learning methods (e.g. Bayesian optimization) so that the robot can improve its behavior in a few trials. |
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| Job Offer Description |
The main test platform is the iCub humanoid robot (an advanced, child-like robot ; see http://www.icub.org). Experiments will take advantage of our motion capture facilities and will rely our team’s expertise in both machine learning (Jean-Baptiste Mouret) and humanoid control (Serena Ivaldi & Karim Bouyarmane).
The selected post-doc will work in interaction with ERC project ResiBots (funded by the European Research Commission, http://www.resibots.eu) and the EU project CODYCO (www.codyco.eu). The overall goal of the Resibots project is to develop novel learning algorithms that make it possible for autonomous robots to quickly discover compensatory behaviors when they are damaged (e.g. a broken motor) or when they encounter an unforeseen situation. The CODYCO project is focused on whole-body control of humanoid robots and adaptation in presence of multiple contacts.
Demonstrations: [ResiBots] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-c17RKh3uE , [CoDyCo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrPBSSQEr3A
See also: http://members.loria.fr/JBMouret and http://www.loria.fr/~sivaldi/ |
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| Skills and profile |
A successful post-doc applicant should have a strong robotics and/or machine learning background with a track record of top-tier research publications, including relevant conferences (e.g., RSS, ICRA, IROS or ICML, IJCAI, AAAI) and journals (e.g., AURO, TRo, IJRR, JMLR, MLJ, Neural Computation). A Ph.D. in robotics or another field clearly related to robotics and/or machine learning is a must.
Expertise in working with real robot systems is a big plus. A robotics engineer is dedicated to the project, but good C++ programming skills will be useful. Strong knowledge of optimal control and/or machine learning are required, but we will definitely consider applicants who have expertise in only one of these two fields. |
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| Benefits |
-Duration : 18 months from October 2016.
-Salary : Monthly salary after taxes : around 2120€ (medical insurance included)
-Possibility of French classes
-Help for housing
-Contribution in part to the costs of transport (French public transport company)
-Scientific resident card and help for husband/wife visa
-Possibility of lunch for 4.02 € per day
-Complementary health insurance with competitive price |
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| Additional Information |
Additional Information :
-Post-doc supervisor e-mail address : Jean-Baptiste Mouret -Jean-baptiste.mouret@inria.fr / Serena Ivaldi – serena.ivaldi@inria.fr
-http://www.resibots.eu
-http://www.codyco.eu
-http://members.loria.fr/JBMouret
-Application file must contain the following documents :
oThe 3 most significant/best publications
oCV
oCover letter
oLetter of recommendation or references
Security and defense procedure : In the interests of protecting its scientific and technological assets, Inria is a restricted-access establishment. Consequently, it follows special regulations for welcoming any person who whishes to work with the institute. The final acceptance of each applicant thus depends on applying this security and defense procedure. |
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