At the Mixed Reality Laboratory, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham

Closing date:  28^th March 2025, interviews will take place in April and May

Department: Computer Science

Eligibility

This studentship is open to UK Home students only.

Details of Studentship:

We are recruiting a fully-funded PhD student to work alongside our new UKRI-funded £6.5M research programme in Somabotics: Creatively Embodying Artificial Intelligence led by Professor Steve Benford.

The topic of this studentship is Soft Soma Skins – a new kind of technology that mediates physical interaction between humans and robots. We currently imagine these to be soft materials that dress both human and robot bodies. Embedded sensors will capture data about mutual touch. Embedded actuators will deliver haptic feedback to complete an interactive loop between human and robot bodies. The PhD might focus on the design and prototyping of soma skins, soft wearable devices, possible artistic applications, the manufacture of soft sensors and actuators, or the data and AI models that soma skins would generate and utilise. However, this initial description is just the beginning, and we are keen to hear your own interpretation of Soft Soma Skins.

The PhD will be part of the wider Somabotics programme that is exploring new kinds of creative interaction between humans and AI, especially robots. You will join a multidisciplinary team of twelve researchers and renowned artists who will be creating, touring, and studying high-profile artworks to demonstrate how humans can interact with robots in more meaningful ways. You can find out more about Somabotics  here on our recruitment webpage and explore examples of our recent work here in Professor Benford’s website.

You will benefit from:

• Being part of a new world-leading research programme at the cutting edge of AI, robotics, HCI and creativity.
• A fully-funded four-year PhD programme that integrates a leading-edge research project with research training in multi-disciplinary research.
• Being part of an exciting research environment to support your PhD research and help you establish your profile and career
• Being part of a multi-disciplinary team of twelve researchers based in the Mixed Reality Laboratory in Nottingham’s School of Computer Science
• Access to the state of the art facilities in the University’ Cobot Maker Space, Virtual and Immersive Production Studio, and Mixed Reality Laboratory.
• Gaining highly sought after interdisciplinary skills and experience.

There will be extensive opportunities for travel, including for additional training activities (e.g., Summer Schools and Doctorial Colloquia), participating in conferences, and visits to international and industry partners.

Entry Requirements:

Application Process:

Applicants to initially email their applications to Steve Benford: Steve.benford@nottingham.ac.uk.

Following discussion with Steve, formal applications will then be submitted via the University’s PhD application website, My Nottingham. More information on how to apply can be found here.

• Note the supervisor is Professor Steve Benford
• Include a CV
• Submit a personal statement covering your background, general motivation to undertake a PhD, specific motivation to undertake a PhD as part of the Somabotics programme in, and a personal PhD proposal that responds to the vision of the programme and the four example PhD topics below.

Soma Skins – we envisage soma skins to be a new kind of technology that mediates physical interaction between humans and robots. They might, for example, be soft materials with embedded sensors and actuators that can dress both human and robot bodies to capture data about mutual touch while delivering sensation to guide interaction in return. The PhD might focus on the design and prototyping of soma skins, possible artistic applications, the manufacture of crafting of sensors and actuators into materials, or the data that soma skins would generate and utilise.

Improvising with AI – we wish to explore how humans and AI can improvise together during live performance, for example when playing music together as part of an ensemble. The PhD might focus on developing new AI models, driving and evaluating these through live performance. It might also consider how humans would interact with such models, for example by embedding interfaces into augmented musical instruments or robot musicians.

AI and feelings – we wish to explore the role of ‘feelings’ in our interactions with AI. Feelings occupy an ambiguous place between our conscious thoughts and our pre-conscious emotions and sensations – they are the point at which our emptions become apparent to ourselves, so we can name and describe them. The PhD will l look beyond current research in emotion detection to explore how AI and robots can engage messy and ambiguous world of human feelings through applications spanning art and wellbeing. How might such as AI help us better understand our own feelings? This PhD would be in partnership with and supported by our partner Blueskeye AI, a company developing emotion recognition for applications including Healthcare, Well-being, and Social Robotics.

Documentation, datasets and archives – AI is dependent on datasets, which may be made public in archives as a resource for the research community. In turn, art is dependent on rich documentation which may be generated during the artistic process so that it could be used by scholars and curators to study, exhibit and reactivate archived artworks. This PhD will explore the relationship between artworks’ datasets and documentation – what are their similarities and differences? How can best practice in art documentation enhance AI datasets? And how in turn, can AI support the documentation of artworks?