Dans le cadre de nos différentes coopérations de recherche européennes françaises et internationales, nous recherchons des post-doc.

NB : le CTS ayant un quota de stagiaires limité, les demandes de candidature doivent être envoyées directement au siège social dans les domaines concernés pour une place à l’Ingénierie, l’Informatique.

Pour le CTS, une formation de Grandes Écoles ou équivalent est demandée et un fort intérêt pour les algorithmes de calcul dans les domaines de la synthèse d’images, l’automatique ou du traitement de signal.

Post-doctoral position proposal
Post-doc CLARESCO project
PhD Thesis proposal


Post-doctoral position proposal

In the framework of the European research project ULTIMATE (Eureka project #1493), a post-doctoral position is offered in Paris, France for a period of one year starting January 2004.

ULTIMATE is a new high-performance driving simulator developed by a consortium of industrial and academic partners : RENAULT (Guyancourt, France), SEOS Ltd. (Burgess Hill, UK), REXROTH-HYDRAUDYNE (Boxtel, the Netherlands) and CNRS-LPPA (Paris, France). The simulator prototype is now under construction in RENAULT Technocentre, and will be operational from June 2003. This simulator combines two main features :
- a large-amplitude motion cueing system, based on large rails rendering in both X and Y directions, plus a 6-degrees-of-freedom hexapod system for rotations ;
- an on-board immersive display system, switchable between a projection display with curved screen, and a stereoscopic head-mounted-display with very large field-of-view and very low weight.

The objectives of the Eureka research project include an experimental study of the perception-related issues involved when driving this simulator. This study is to be conducted on the ULTIMATE prototype by CNRS-LPPA (Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action, Collège de France) with the collaboration of the post-doctoral fellow. The domain of research for that study includes :
- evaluating the effects of combined linear vection and acceleration ;
- analyzing the effects of combined visuo-vestibular cues in curves ;
- measuring perceived distances in the HMD, and the influence of motion parallax ;
- optimizing motion cueing algorithms to elicit realistic motion perception ;
- analyzing driver behavior in typical basic driving situations (braking, turns, etc.) with regards to motion perception factors.
The further definition of the experimental protocols chosen among these research areas will be done in collaboration with the different project partners in order to optimally combine fundamental and applied objectives.

The position proposed to applicants with a PhD in the field of Cognitive Sciences, Neurosciences, Experimental Psychology, etc., with a strong interest in :
- experimental psychophysics ;
- multi-sensory motion perception ;
- computer interfaces ;
- driver behavior modeling.
Although programming skills are not necessary to use the simulator as an experimental tool, some proficiency with computer interfaces is preferable to set up the experiments with the development teams.

Selected References

Kemeny A, Panerai F. Evaluating perception in driving simulation experiments. Trends Cogn Sci. 2003 Jan;7(1):31-37
Reymond G, Droulez J, Kemeny A. Visuovestibular perception of self-motion modeled as a dynamic optimization process. Biol Cybern. 2002 Oct;87(4):301-14
Reymond G, Kemeny A, Droulez J, Berthoz A. Role of lateral acceleration in curve driving: driver model and experiments on a real vehicle and a driving simulator. Hum Factors. 2001 Fall;43(3):483-95
RENAULT Technical Center for Simulation
LPPA laboratory
INRETS information page on driving simulators

Contact :


Dr. Andras Kemeny
Associate Research Director, CNRS
Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action
UMR n°9950 CNRS - Collège de France
11, Place Marcelin Berthelot, Paris 75005
tel : +33 (0) 1 76 85 19 85 ; fax : +33 (0) 1 76 85 27 30
e-mail: andras.kemeny@college-de-france.fr


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Post-doctoral CLARESCO proposal


Within the framework of the European project CLARESCO, the Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action (CNRS- Collège de France), Paris, has a post doctorate position available for a year starting in the fall of 2003 for a perceptual evaluation of new advanced car lighting strategies.

Project overview :

The CLARESCO project aims at improving traffic safety at night through the evaluation of innovative lighting technologies dedicated to truck and car driving. The evaluation framework that will be developed in this context will allow the analysis of human perception and behavior in terms of safety, efficiency and comfort according to the driving environment such as traffic conditions.

New Intelligent lighting technologies may prevent accidents by illuminating road turns, cyclists and pedestrians, among other things. However the effect of advanced lighting systems on traffic safety, driver comfort and perception has not been estimated yet through a unified methodology. CLARESCO project will develop a comprehensive framework to analyze, assess and predict implications of a range of future lighting systems.

In order to estimate the contribution of such a technology, the proposed work consist of detecting potential physiological and/or behavioral changes that might occur while using adaptive car lighting strategies in night time driving by using simulation tools. Then evaluate if those changes produce a decrease in both safety and comfort while car driving at night.
For that goal, distance perception and gaze orientation mechanisms will be studied in different driving situations (with specific attention on curve driving). A detection of the conflicts existing between the direction of the lighting and specific body mechanisms (such as eye and head motion) will be achieved.

The position proposed to applicants with a PhD in the field of Cognitive Sciences, Neurosciences, Experimental Psychology, etc., with a strong interest in:
- Visual psychophysics;
- Multi-sensory perception;
- Computer interfaces;
- Driver behavior modeling.

An application should include a letter describing the applicant's graduate training and research interests, a CV and sample publications. Send applications and inquiries to:

Contact :

Dr. Andras Kemeny
Associate Research Director, CNRS
Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action
UMR n°9950 CNRS-Collège de France
11, Place Marcelin Berthelot, Paris 75005
tel: +33 (0) 1 76 85 19 85; fax: +33 (0) 1 76 85 27 30
e-mail: andras.kemeny@college-de-France.fr


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Traffic thesis

PhD Thesis proposal

Description

The Technical Centre for Simulation of Renault has been developing and using driving simulators for more than ten years. These simulators are used for vehicle design studies (ergonomics studies, accident analysis, design of new intelligent components in a car, validation of lightning…). The software that runs those simulators, named SCANeR, has been developed by Renault, and is made up of several modules, for instance a visualisation module, a sound generator, a vehicle dynamics model and a traffic generator. SCANeR is commercialised since 1995, and users include the University of Minnesota, the Transport Research Laboratory, the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, the Fraunhofer-Institut, Renault and Nissan among others.

In those simulators, the driver is placed within a virtual world, and the traffic around the driven vehicle is of uttermost importance. The requirements of a traffic generator are twofold: each virtual vehicles should drive realistically around the vehicle driven by the subject, and it should be possible to control those vehicles to reproduce a specific traffic situation required for an experiment.
In the approach taken at Renault, each vehicle is an agent that is made up of different parts: perception of its environment, simplified mechanics model, control level (following a trajectory), tactical level (deciding to override) and strategy (where do I want to go). Each vehicle can be ordered to take specific actions by a scripting language.

The subject of the thesis is first to define a new software architecture that will allow agents to interact with each other and a high level scripting language. Then one agent (or even better a set of agents) that simulates a vehicle will have to be designed. This thesis will take place during the development of a new major release of SCANeR, and thus important modifications of the existing mechanism are to be envisioned.

Some directions of research might be:
- State of the art of AI techniques, especially for the driver behaviour (fuzzy logic, neural networks, hierarchical state machines…);
- De-correlate the different sub-models that make up an agent, and thus enable the user to create a new agent by combining those sub-models;
- Study the collaboration of different models (designed independently) within the same scene;
- Improve the perception of realism of the traffic through the disparity of driving behaviour;
- Develop the co-operative behaviour / interactions of drivers (in many crossroads situations, a strict application of the regulations lead to a deadlock, that can only be resolved by co-operation between the drivers)
- Improve the level of control from the scripting language on the driven vehicles
This thesis will take place as a co-operation between Renault and the Applied Mathematics Centre (CMA) of the École des Mines de Paris.

Profile

The expected profile for this thesis is a background in computer science, and centres of interest in AI, robotics, automatic control engineering…
This three years work will start in autumn 2003.

Selected references

http://www.experts.renault.com/DSC99/papers/P41.PDF
http://www.experts.renault.com/kemeny/index.html


Contact :


Renault :
Dr. Andras Kemeny

Department Manager
Technical Centre for Simulation
1, avenue du Golf
TCR AVA 2 12
78288 Guyancourt cedex
tel: +33 (0) 1 76 85 19 85; fax: +33 (0) 1 76 85 27 30
andras.kemeny@renault.com

CMA :
Dr. Nadia Maizi

Manager
Centre de Mathématiques Appliquées of the Ecole des Mines de Paris
2004, route des Lucioles
BP 93
06902 Sophia Antipolis cedex
tel: + 33 (0) 4 92 38 79 60 ; fax: +33 (0) 4 92 38 79 98
nadia.maizi@cma.inria.fr