[visionlist] Job: Attentive Vision for Robots

[Bärbel Mertsching]

         University of Paderborn
         GET Lab
         One Doctoral/ Post-Doctoral Research Post - Computer Graphics and
           Computer Vision


Applications are invited for one doctoral/ post-doctoral researcher to
work at GET Lab on a DFG funded project entitled "Attentive Vision for
Robotic Assistance Machines (AVRAM) --- early clustering approach towards
artificial visual attention for increasing performance of active vision
systems".

Project goal: Despite its short history modeling visual attention has
found many useful applications in different areas such as visual search,
perceptual grouping, object and gesture recognition, object tracking,
image and video compression and scene rendering in 3D graphics. We
intend to broaden the scope to areas such as driver assistance systems,
rescue robotics, aid systems for the elderly or handicapped, and other
areas where machine vision could play a helping role for people. In this
project, we aim to demonstrate attention behaviors on real-time active
vision systems integrated in mobile robots working in natural 3D
environments with live sensor data so that this work may become a
milestone towards the long-term target of biologically inspired human
assistance machines. For this purpose, we are extending the modalities
of our existing attention model by adding the necessary feature channels
of motion and depth, and reformulating the rest of the attention model
in accordance with the new changes. Moreover we plan to introduce a
spatial memory infrastructure into the model to store locations and
features of the learned objects and to allow the vision system to
operate autonomously for long time spans. In order to quantitatively
measure the performance of this project in particular and evaluate the
output of attention models in general, we intend to build a sharable
resource for performance assessment and benchmarking of visual
attention models. The tool for attention evaluation will be developed
in close interaction with leading experts in the field and made
available for the research community in this area.

The main activities of the researcher at Paderborn will be to
investigate how to evaluate different attention models. This research
will involve generation of 3D testing scenarios, further development of
our robot simulator, visualization of multimodal attention clues,
development of metrics for the evaluation of attention models and the
development of a web based system for the evaluation of different
attention models.

Applicants for the post must have completed a master program in an
appropriate area such as computer science, electrical engineering, or
physics and should have experience with computer graphics, computer
vision as well as the C, C++, and Matlab/Simulink programming languages.
As the project is about 3D data simulation, we will be looking for
applicants with experience with OpenSceneGraph, OpenGL and ODE.

The position is initially for two years with the possibility of
extension. It is paid according to the German Public Service Scale
(TV-L 13). The closing date for applications is November 28, 2008.

The University of Paderborn is an equal opportunity employer:
Handicapped individuals are strongly encouraged to apply, and so are
women in areas in which they are underrepresented.

Further particulars are available from, and electronic applications are
sent to: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bärbel Mertsching,  GET Lab, Fakultät EIM-E,
University of Paderborn, Pohlweg 47-49, 33098 Paderborn, Germany, 
Tel +49 5251 605293, Fax +49 5251 603238, mertsching at upb.de, 
http://getwww.upb.de. A meaningful application should include a cover
letter, a CV, a brief summary of research interests, a statement of
interest in the position offered, and contact information for two
references.



  Prof. Dr.-Ing. Baerbel  M e r t s c h i n g    _____________________

                                               University of Paderborn
                                          Faculty of Computer Science,
                                Electrical Engineering and Mathematics
                                                               GET Lab

  phone: +49/ (0)5251/ 60 - 5293                         Pohlweg 47-49
  fax:   +49/ (0)5251/ 60 - 3238                     D-33098 Paderborn

  email: mertsching at upb.de
  URL:   http://getwww.upb.de
  ____________________________________________________________________
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