* apologies for cross posting *

PhD position on Automatic analysis of affective and social behaviors in
human-robot interaction

http://www.utwente.nl/vacatures/en/

Job specification
The Human Media Interaction group at the University of
Twente is looking for a PhD candidate who will automatically analyse
social interactions based on the speakers' non-verbal behaviors in
speech (paralinguistic information). The aims are to automatically
determine the quality of social interaction between the speakers (both
in dialogues and multi-party conversations) and the speakers' affective
states using vocal cues. Qualitative aspects of social interaction
include, amongst others, levels of engagement, cooperation,
enjoyableness, arousal, valence and rapport.

The work will be carried out within the contexts of two European
projects involving robots, namely TERESA and SQUIRREL. In the TERESA
project, a telepresence robot is controlled by a human controller who
can have robot-mediated conversations with other humans in the vicinity
of the robot. In order to know whether a specific speaker attitude is
caused by the robot's or the human controller's behavior, an assessment
of the interaction is needed. The challenges are to give a continuous
assessment of the quality of interaction under natural conditions, and
to find out what non-verbal vocal cues can be used to detect qualitative
aspects of social interaction. In the SQUIRREL project, children will be
interacting with a robot that aims to encourage and help them tidy up
and put objects back in order. In order to design effective robot
behaviors that encourage and help children tidy up, an assessment of the
interaction among the children and the robot is needed: is the
interaction fun, are the children engaged in the task, is one of the
children excluded in the interaction?

The work will cover a range of various tasks:

* The candidate will collect speech data by recording social
interactions between adult humans (French) and among children (German)
and robots. (S)he will develop and manage audio(visual) databases of
these recorded interactions.

* The candidate will perform analyses on the non-verbal vocal behavior
of the recorded interactions. The candidate will investigate what types
of qualitative and affective aspects of social interaction are relevant
in this context and annotations will be made.

* (S)he will identify relevant non-verbal vocal cues that correlate with
qualitative and affective aspects of social interaction.

* Based on these annotations, the candidate will develop algorithms to
automatically assess qualitative and affective aspects of social
interaction, both in human adult and children speech.

* The candidate is expected to present his/her work in major
(international) conferences and workshops, and to publish in relevant
journals.


Your Profile

* The candidate should have fluent command of English as a written and
spoken language. Since the candidate will be working with Dutch, French
and German data, knowledge of these languages is preferable.

* The candidate has an MSc degree in Computer Science or equivalent (a
degree with a technical background in, e.g., Artificial Intelligence,
Computational Linguistics).

* The candidate is interested in the research fields of speech analysis,
affective computing, social signal processing, and machine learning.

* The candidate has programming skills in one of the following languages
(or equivalents): Python, Perl, or Matlab.

Please send your application with your CV and motivation letter through
the application link before February 7, 2014. Please also include the
names, email addresses, phone numbers, and information about past
working relationships of two people that we could contact for a
recommendation.

Further information about the PhD position can be given by Dr. Khiet
Truong ([log in to unmask]) and Prof. Dr. Vanessa Evers (email:
[log in to unmask]).

Our offer
We offer a full-time PhD position in a dynamic and
international environment. The duration of the contract is four years.
The gross salary will range from € 2.083,00 in the first year to €
2.664,00 per month in the fourth year. Additionally, the University of
Twente provides excellent facilities for professional and personal
development. In addition, we offer a holiday allowance (amounts to 8%)
and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3% and a number of additional benefits.
The labor agreements are in accordance with the CAO-NU for Dutch
universities.

The Organisation
The University of Twente. We stand for life sciences
and technology. High tech and human touch. Education and research that
matter. New technology which drives change, innovation and progress in
society. The University of Twente is the only campus university in the
Netherlands; divided over six faculties we provide more than fifty
educational programmes. The University of Twente has a strong focus on
personal development and talented researchers are given scope for
carrying out pioneering research.

The faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
(EEMCS) comprises three disciplines that shape Information and
Communication Technology. ICT is more than communication. In almost
every product we use mathematics, electronics and computer technology
and ICT now contributes to all of societies' activities. The faculty
works together intensively with industrial partners and researchers in
the Netherlands and abroad and conducts extensive research for external
commissioning parties and funders. The research which enjoys a high
profile both at home and internationally, has been accommodated in the
multidisciplinary research institutes MESA+, CTIT and MIRA.