Adaptive socio-context awareness mechanism for human-robot interaction

Project Highlights:

• Follow a user-centred design approach to understand human-robot interactions in everyday contexts, identifying social cues affecting social robot engagement.
• Apply multiple interaction design techniques such as co-creative design, scenario design, and cultural probes for eliciting information that will help to develop a socio-context awareness system for human-robot interaction
• Develop a socio-context awareness system for human-robot interaction for human-likeness and behaviour change.

As emerging technologies integrate into our society, we will interact even more frequently with IoT devices, autonomous systems, and robots; thus, new challenges and questions will arise. In real-life environments like home, there are multiple challenges to overcome to situate these emerging technologies in the social structure of daily life. One of these emerging technologies are robots, particularly social robots. Latest investigations have shown the potential that social robots could help support. For example, as companions of older adults or even supporting therapies within healthcare contexts, but still is unclear how robots will overcome and repair when human-likeness decrease. This project will explore the complexities that emerge when people interact with robots in unstructured environments to identify social cues that affect robot engagement. In addition, this project will explore how to design and prototype a social awareness framework that guides human-robot social interactions. One unexplored area of research that this project will focus on is household scenarios where social robots will be required to integrate socio-context understanding to deal with human-likeness and behaviour change when operating in domestic situations. We aim to explore the gap in knowledge of the challenges of human-centred robot interactions when engagement with robots is affected by a lack of contextual understanding.

Keywords: Human-computer interaction, human-robot interaction, human-centred robot interaction, multimodal interaction, psychology

For further information on the project, please contact:

Carolina Fuentes – [Email Address Removed]

Katarzyna Stawarz - [Email Address Removed]

Academic criteria: A 2:1 Honours undergraduate degree or a master's degree, in computing or a related subject. Applicants with appropriate professional experience are also considered. Degree-level mathematics (or equivalent) is required for research in some project areas.

Applicants for whom English is not their first language must demonstrate proficiency by obtaining an IELTS score of at least 6.5 overall, with a minimum of 6.0 in each skills component.

How to apply:

Please contact the supervisors of the project prior to submitting your application to discuss and develop an individual research proposal that builds on the information provided in this advert. Once you have developed the proposal with support from the supervisors, please submit your application following the instructions provided below

Please submit your application before the application deadline 29th April 2022 via Computer Science and Informatics - Study - Cardiff University

In order to be considered candidates must submit the following information: 

• Supporting statement 
• CV 
• In the ‘Research Proposal’ section of the application enter the name of the project you are applying to and upload your Individual research proposal, as mentioned above in BOLD
• In the funding field of your application, insert “I am applying for 2022 PhD Scholarship in Computer Science and Informatics”, and specify the project title and supervisors of this project in the text box provided.
• Qualification certificates and Transcripts
• References x 2 
• Proof of English language (if applicable)

Interview - If the application meets the entrance requirements, you will be invited to an interview

If you have any questions or need more information, please contact [Email Address Removed]