[agents] Research Fellow in Collaborative Systems @ The University of Melbourne

[Adrian Pearce]

RESEARCH FELLOW IN  COLLABORATIVE SYSTEMS @ THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

Applications close 22 April 2013

Professor Liz Sonenberg & Assoc Professor Adrian Pearce

The University of Melbourne is seeking an outstanding Research Fellow to conduct leading edge research in collaborative systems.

The position will be located in the Department of Computing and Information Systems within the Melbourne School of Engineering.
 
Salary $104,370-$120,344 AUD p.a. (Senior Research Fellow) or $85,203-$101,175 (Research Fellow) plus 9% superannuation; Employment type: Full-time Fixed Term

The successful candidate will conduct leading-edge research and development in the area of collaborative systems. The work is part of an ARC funded project, "Foundations of human-agent collaboration: situation-relevant information sharing".

As part of the team, working with Professor Liz Sonenberg and Assoc Professor Adrian Pearce, you would be involved in conceptual analysis of joint human-machine activity, development of mechanisms for collaborative systems involving mixed teams of humans, software agents, and robots, and development of software tools to support coordination of the interdependencies among the activities of the participants.

The position will specifically involve advanced use of artificial intelligence techniques, such as planning languages, interactive systems and action languages, especially those used for distributed multi-agent problems.  

This project tackles a challenging problem in collaborative systems. Human-agent robotic teamwork, also termed human-automation teamwork, involving teams comprised of software agents, robots and humans, is increasingly being exploited to carry out tasks such as remote management of air or ground vehicles, and robot-assisted search and rescue operations. Such use of software assistants and physical robots to support human activities will increase in coming years. When action outcomes can be uncertain, successful collaborative activity cannot be fully pre-scripted, but must allow for adjustment as events unfold

There is a need for the development of new techniques in collaborative systems for representing and reasoning about joint task achievement in dynamic environments. As automated systems become more sophisticated in their capabilities, the design of effective interaction with human operators becomes more demanding. 

The goal of this project is to discover novel computational mechanisms and to demonstrate their utility in software prototypes to support the development of human-automation teams that can coordinate and collaborate in fast changing task environments. More details can be found at http://www.agentlab.unimelb.edu.au/collaborative_systems.html

RESEARCH GROUP

You will be involved in a team of researchers working in the field of artificial intelligence. Relevant research groups include: 

The Intelligent Agent Laboratory (Agentlab): http://www.agentlab.unimelb.edu.au/

The Defence Science Institute: http://www.defencescienceinstitute.com

Optimisation group of NICTA: http://www.nicta.com.au/research/optimisation

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

http://www.jobs.unimelb.edu.au
 
Research Fellow in Collaborative Systems: position number 0030739 (closing 22 April 2013)

CONTACT: 

For more information, please contact Professor Liz Sonenberg, l.sonenberg at unimelb.edu.au

Adrian
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Adrian Pearce
Department of Computing and Information Systems,
The University of Melbourne, Melbourne VIC 3010
Phone: +61 3 8344 1399 adrianrp at unimelb.edu.au
http://www.csse.unimelb.edu.au/~adrian/