R&D Engineer, Social Robotics for Human-Aware Navigation

Research & Development Engineer position in Social Robotics at Inria, in Grenoble, France

Level of qualifications required : Graduate degree or equivalent

Fonction : Temporary scientific engineer

About the research centre or Inria department

The Inria research centre in Lyon is the 9th Inria research centre, formally created in January 2022. It brings together approximately 320 people in 19 research teams and research support services.

Its staff are distributed in Villeurbanne, Lyon Gerland, Grenoble and Saint-Etienne.

The Lyon centre is active in the fields of software, distributed and high-performance computing, embedded systems, quantum computing and privacy in the digital world, but also in digital health and computational biology.

Context

Chroma is an Inria research team located in Lyon and Grenoble, which aims at designing algorithms and models to allow autonomous agents to perceive, decide, learn and adapt to their environment, by bringing together probabilistic methods, machine learning, planning techniques, multi-agent decision making, and constrained optimisation tools.

The team develops and maintains many experimental platforms, and is involved in many academic and industrial projects in the field of Mobile Robotics and Autonomous Vehicles.

The proposed 1‑year Research & Development Engineer or PostDoc position is part of a collaborative project with Enchanted Tools ( to transfer technologies designed by the Chroma team to Enchanted Tools' Mirokai robot.

Assignment

Within the framework of the above‑mentioned project, the objectives are to develop, optimize, extend and deploy our social convention representation models for the navigation of social robots in hospitals, in the presence of humans and other robots.

The work will involve transferring the research work carried out by the team, initially on a wheelchair ( to the Mirokai robotic platform developed by Enchanted Tools ( The first step will be to develop software bricks validated in simulation, then to transfer these bricks to the real robot and carry out tests in an environment populated by humans. The final stage will be to test these bricks in a hospital environment (Station H in Lyon).

The engineer recruited will work within a team of engineers already working on several robotics projects, in interaction with PostDoc students and Engineers from the Chroma team. He/she will be expected to reinforce the existing skills of the engineering team, by contributing or developing expertise in planning trajectories that respects social conventions (human‑aware navigation, leader tracking, etc.).

The engineer or PostDoc recruited will also help set up demonstrations, and may be involved in scientific publications and international conferences. He/she will probably be required to travel to Lyon and Paris to work more closely with partners.

Main activities

The activities of the engineer recruited will consist of:

• Developing bricks for modelling social environments
• Develop bricks for social navigation
• Adapt existing technological bricks to the sensors and actuators of the Mirokai robot
• Propose and develop new methods and algorithms, and integrate them into the current framework
• Write documentation, reports and scientific articles
• Carry out tests using simulation tools and experimental platforms
• Take part in presentations and demonstrations with the Mirokai robot to a variety of audiences
• Work in close collaboration with Enchanted Tools engineers

Skills

Engineer with R&D experience or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics or closely related fields.

Good theoretical and practical background in one of the following domains: Social Robotics, Scene Understanding, Trajectory planning, Human‑Aware navigation.

The following qualifications would be an advantage:

• Experience using the Robotics library ROS
• Good skills in C/C++
• Good skills in Linux, system management
• Ability to work as a teammate with other researchers
• French and English skills (written and spoken)

Benefits package

• Partial reimbursement of public transport costs
• Leave: 7 weeks of annual leave + 10 extra days off due to RTT + possibility of exceptional leave (sick children, moving home, etc.)
• Possibility of teleworking (90 days / year) and flexible organization of working hours Social, cultural and sports events and activities
• Access to vocational training
• Social security coverage under conditions

Remuneration

From 2,692 € (depending on experience and qualifications).

• Theme/Domain : Robotics and Smart environments Software Experimental platforms(BAP C)

Instruction to apply

Applications must be submitted online via the Inria website. Applications submitted via other channels are not guaranteed to be processed.

Defence Security

This position is likely to be assigned to a restricted area (ZRR), as defined in decree no. relating to the protection of the nation's scientific and technical potential (PPST). Authorisation to access a zone is issued by the head of the establishment, following a favourable ministerial opinion, as defined in the decree of 03 July 2012 relating to the PPST. An unfavourable ministerial opinion for a post assigned to a ZRR would result in the recruitment being cancelled.

Recruitment Policy

As part of its diversity policy, all Inria positions are accessible to people with disabilities.