Project Description

Collaboration between humans and robots is rapidly increasing, creating a need for integrative work between engineering and psychology to improve robots' collaborative skills. One promising approach is to equip robots with cutting-edge cognitive computational models of their human collaborators' decision-making processes. These models would enable robots to account for latent factors guiding human decisions (e.g., beliefs, inferences, preferences, risk, confidence, caution), during collaborative tasks. This could enhance the efficiency of robots' observational learning and allow them to take actions that support and optimise human decision-making, ultimately improving teamwork and productivity.

Successful candidates will gain a broad set of interdisciplinary skills in an area poised to have a transformative societal impact. This experience will position candidates as contributors in shaping the future of artificial intelligence technology in an increasingly automated world.

The project will be supervised by Dr. Milan Andrejevic, a Lecturer in Psychology, and Dikai Liu, a Distinguished Professor in Robotics from the University of Technology Sydney, and entail a collaboration with Prof. Jakob Hohwy, a Professor in Philosophy from Monash University.

Principal supervisor

Dr Milan Andrejevic

Faculty of Health, Psychology

View Dr Milan Andrejevic's profile

Eligibility criteria

Candidates should have: 

• Honours or Masters degree in: 

  • Psychology, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and a good grasp of statistics OR 

  • Engineering, Computer Science OR other related and relevant discipline and a strong interest in psychological science;

• Willingness to learn computational cognitive modelling approaches;

• Excellent academic writing skills;

• Experience with, and/or willingness to learn coding and using statistical software (R, Matlab, Python, and/or alike);

• Demonstrated work ethic;

• Fluency in English;

• Full-time dedication to the project.

Also desirable:

• a record of contributing to academic publications;

• experience with mathematical / computational modelling.

Scholarship

This project includes funding for a living stipend scholarship at the UTS rate of $37,000 per annum (tax-exempt) with fee waivers provided.

How to apply

If you would like to apply for this project, please send your CV and Research Proposal to Milan Andrejevic (Milan.Andrejevic@uts.edu.au) and Dikai Liu (dikai.liu@uts.edu.au).