Shaping a personalized child-robot learning experience

19 Jan 2024
Job Information

Organisation/Company

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)

Research Field

Technology

Researcher Profile

First Stage Researcher (R1)

Country

Netherlands

Application Deadline

20 Jan 2024 - 22:59 (UTC)

Type of Contract

Temporary

Job Status

Not Applicable

Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?

Not funded by an EU programme

Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure?

No

Offer Description

A 4-year full-time Ph.D. student position is available at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (jointly supervised with Utrecht University) on shaping a personalized child-robot learning experience. The focus lies on facilitating a mixed-initiative long-term conversation between the child and the robot. The position is embedded in the 5-year NWA project Dramaturgy for Devices, a collaboration between four universities and many other partners mainly from the creative and robotics sectors in the Netherlands.

The Dramaturgy for Devices project aims at designing sustained relationships with robots and other smart technologies. It will explore the value of the performing arts as a motor for innovation and reflection in a high-tech society and demonstrate how collaboration with the performing arts can be a game changer regarding the development of the behavior of and interaction with robots and other technological agents. Robots are increasingly part of our daily lives, yet they still lack many skills needed for social interaction and communication. Addressing this gap requires innovative approaches, tools and methods for developing interactions with robots in a diversity of social contexts.

The main objective of this PhD-project is to facilitate a sustainable, long-term interaction by means of personalization through a conversational interaction. The focus is on improving the social performance of educational robots for children in the classroom (societal impact) by designing a robot that co-develops with the children who grow and learn at school. Building on previous work that has a narrative educational approach for teaching children math, which largely was based on scripted material, this project will focus on extending the conversational interaction capabilities of robots.

The objectives are to:

• Provide a personalized learning experience, where personalized social interaction reinforces personalized learning with a robot and vice versa, to increase motivation for long-term interaction.
• Design novel methods and tools to create interactive personalized content for conversational interaction, involving creative writers, which is the main focus of the interventions designed.
• Integrate Large Language Model (LLM) capabilities for enabling children to take the initiative in a conversation (i.e. to enable co-regulation) and develop conversation management models for managing the (scope of the) conversation (e.g. facilitating repair, and turns for bringing the conversation back to the conversational topic and scope the robot is able to handle).

Your duties
The candidate will investigate technologies for extending the conversational capabilities (co-regulation, conversation management) of a robot interacting with children in an educational context: The aims of the project will be to develop:

a) novel methods for creating interactive personalized content for conversational interaction, involving creative writer, e.g., through child-centered design, focus groups, qualitative methods;
b) conversational interaction patterns that support co-regulation (e.g. enable children to take the initiative in the conversation) by integrating LLMs into the interaction architecture of an educational robot;
c) conversational management skills for a social robot that enable it to repair and respond to out of genre conversational turns of children interacting with it.

Requirements
Specific Requirements

• Master degree in Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, or related interdisciplinary fields such as Interaction Technology that combines an understanding of the underlying AI technology and human-centered approaches;
• Comfortable using various programming paradigms (e.g. agent-based, logical-based, and object-oriented programming) and programming languages;
• Willingness to step outside their own discipline to solve complex problems that cut across bodies of knowledge in different fields, and to cooperate with e.g. professional writers;
• A good team spirit and willingness to collaborate across institutions and be actively involved in the larger project consortium;
• Affinity with social robotics.

The candidate will be supervised jointly by Prof. Dr. Koen Hindriks (Social AI group, VU Amsterdam), Dr. Mike Ligthart (Social AI group, VU Amsterdam), and Laura Karreman (Theatre and Performance Studies, UU). The position is embedded in the NWA Dramaturgy for Devices project, hence adaptivity to work in a heterogeneous team and consortium, creativity and interest in multi-disciplinary research are fundamental. The candidate will be mainly based at VU Amsterdam, but will be expected to actively collaborate with the other PhD projects that are part of Dramaturgy for Devices.

As a university, we strive for equal opportunities for all, recognising that diversity takes many forms. We believe that diversity in all its complexity is invaluable for the quality of our teaching, research and service. We are always looking for talent with diverse backgrounds and experiences. This also means that we are committed to creating an inclusive community so that we can use diversity as an asset.

We realise that each individual brings a unique set of skills, expertise and mindset. Therefore we are happy to invite anyone who recognises themselves in the profile to apply, even if you do not meet all the requirements.

Additional Information
Benefits

A challenging position in a socially engaged organisation. At VU Amsterdam, you contribute to education, research and service for a better world. And that is valuable. So in return for your efforts, we offer you:

• a salary of € 2.770,00 (PhD) and maximum € 3.539,00 (PhD) gross per month in the fourth year, for a full-time employment
• an employment contract of initially 18 months. If there is sufficient perspective, this will be extended to a total of 4 years. Your dissertation at the end of the fourth year forms the end of your employment contract.

We also offer you attractive fringe benefits and arrangements. Some examples:

• A full-time 38-hour working week comes with a holiday leave entitlement of 232 hours per year. If you choose to work 40 hours, you have 96 extra holiday leave hours on an annual basis. For part-timers, this is calculated pro rata.
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus
• solid pension scheme (ABP)
• contribution to commuting expenses
• optional model for designing a personalized benefits package

Additional comments

Are you interested in this position? Please apply via the application button until 20/01/2024. Please include in your application a short motivation letter, your CV, and a 1-page statement about your previous research.

Note that this job opening is one of four PhD positions in the Dramaturgy for Devices project (https://performingrobots.sites.uu.nl/ , “News”). In case you apply to more than one, please inform the project leader via email ([email protected] ) of the projects you are applying to.
We strongly encourage female or gender nonbinary individuals, as well as people from marginalized groups or minorities, to apply.

Applications received by e-mail will not be processed.

Vacancy questions
If you have any questions regarding this vacancy, you may contact:

Name: Prof. Dr. Koen Hindriks
Position: Full Professor
E-mail: [email protected]

For more information regarding moving to Amsterdam, and working at VU Amsterdam, please check: https://workingat.vu.nl/international-staff

Applications received by e-mail will not be considered.

Acquisition in response to this advertisement is not appreciated.

Website for additional job details

https://www.academictransfer.com/336797/

Work Location(s)

Number of offers available

1

Company/Institute

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Country

Netherlands

City

Amsterdam

Postal Code

1081HV

Street

De Boelelaan 1111

Geofield

Where to apply

Website

https://www.academictransfer.com/en/336797/shaping-a-personalized-child-robot-l…

Contact

City

Amsterdam

Website

http://www.vu.nl/

Street

De Boelelaan 1105

Postal Code

1081 HV

STATUS: EXPIRED