PhD Robotics IST-EPFL 2011

Post date: Oct 12, 2010 12:42:15 PM

IST-EPFL Joint Doctoral Initiative

Call for PhD Student Applications

Distributed and Cognitive Robotics Focus Area

The Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) offer a Joint Doctoral Initiative in 7 cutting edge research domains.:

Biological and Medical Imaging

Distributed and Cognitive Robotics

Computational and Stochastic Mathematics

Antennas and EM devices for Wireless Applications

Environmental Hydraulics

Plasma Physics

Architecture

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The focus area of Distributed and Cognitive Robotics is highly interdisciplinary and involves two main research lines: (i) distributed, networked robots and (ii) cognitive personal assistant robots and devices capable of interacting with humans and understanding human actions.

* Distributed, networked robots - Recent advances in robotics, computer vision, artificial intelligence, statistical signal processing and control theory, as well as the advent of miniaturized sensors and actuators, powerful embedded processors, and wireless communication systems, have afforded engineers with the methodologies and technologies to design and build networks of autonomous robots and systems. The applications include monitoring and operations in hazardous or remote environments (ocean, space, contaminated areas, areas destroyed by natural disasters, etc), in industrial or civil engineering structures (pipeline monitoring and surveillance, bridges, dams), and in services (buildings, public areas, traffic monitoring and surveillance).

* Cognitive personal assistant robots - The massive deployment of sensors and robotic devices (e.g. smart appliances, robotic assistants) in offices, homes and urban environments, as opposed to factories, places the interaction with humans and the interpretation of human activity in a central role (e.g. ambient intelligence, health-care, surveillance). This challenge opens a new landscape of research directions in learning, human action recognition and cognition in a multidisciplinary approach involving (e.g. humanoid) robotic systems, as well as neuroscience and psychology. The research domains in this Focus Area include Human activity recognition from sensor data (e.g. video), context aware systems that can learn from observation and Learning by imitation in humanoid robotic assistants with biological inspiration.

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Admitted students will share their time between Lisbon and Lausanne and will be supervised by leading experts from both institutions.

GRANTS AVAILABLE FOR OUTSTANDING CANDIDATES WORLDWIDE

Application dates (3rd call): October 4th to November 15th 2010

More information and details:

www.ist.utl.pt/IST‐EPFL

E-mail: ist‐epfl@ist.utl.pt