1 PhD Research position in real-time interactive virtual characters and crowds in Sweden | KTH - Royal Institute Of Technology

This PhD position is focused on programming the real-time simulation of social behaviours (appropriate facial expressions, gaze, gestures and other movements) for virtual individuals, groups and crowds using state-of-the-art computer game engines, such as Unity 3D. A core task in the project involves programming computational models of social behaviour related to empathy, emotion contagion and prosociality for creating compelling interactions within groups of virtual characters and between virtual characters and human users. The research evaluation methodology will include, in addition to other methods, perceptual studies with human participants. The research has conceptual overlaps with efforts involving the study of Uncanny Valley and human reactions to synthetic humanoids (virtual agents and social robots).

The position will be affiliated with the Visualisation Studio and HPCViz Department, KTH and is partially-funded by the EU Horizon 2020 project ProsocialLearn, a consortium of nine leading European industry and university partners focusing on the use of computer games technology for developing prosocial educational scenarios involving virtual characters.

Qualifications:

A suitable background for this position would be a Master of Science in Computer Science or equivalent. In addition to the traditional academic merits, especially strong programming skills, qualifications relating to domains of social robotics, 3D character modelling and animation, real-time rendering and simulation of virtual characters, embodied conversational agents and autonomous multi-agent systems, multimodal human computer/machine interaction, virtual reality, computer games technologies, HCI methods and perceptual user studies are advantageous.

Applicants must be strongly motivated for doctoral studies, possess the ability to work independently and perform critical analysis and also possess good levels of cooperative and communicative abilities.