Training & Workshops

In addition to technical training through PhD courses, dedicated tutorials and workshops organized by the Network, the 15 talented doctoral candidates which have been recruited will benefit from a wide range of complementary non-technical training activities such as entrepreneurship, authoring scientific papers/patents, dissemination, etc.
In parallel, a cross-disciplinary and inter-sectorial training programme will be implemented through network events and secondments to non-academic partners.

A successful scientist requires a vast toolkit of skills: the ability to harness and maximize their creativity, exploit the vast potential of their surrounding scientific network, draw on synergies and lever their collaborations to overcome hurdles whether scientific, technological, economic or human, and then find the most effective routes to dissemination and exploitation of research output.

Christopher Peters (KTH) is the Training Manager and will coordinate the training activities in 4 main tasks:

Task 1: Establish standard structure for all ESR training at project start-up.
Task 2: Establish complete PCDPs for all ESRs with their ESC.
Task 3: Organisation and management of network wide Workshops and Training events.
Task 4: Organisation and management of network wide Summer Schools.

Partner organisations will also play a key role in this workpackage, specifically, by taking part in the project (Furhat Robotics, UW–Madison, ICT, IMM, Mobsya) and providing training in different forms via hosting secondments (Furhat Robotics, Interactive Robotics, USC, UW–Madison). Finally, all beneficiaries (SU, UU, KTH, EPFL, IMT, INESCID, JacobsUni, SBR) will contribute to ESRs’ training by hosting secondments, with SoftBank Robotics (SBR) playing a key role in hosting industrial secondments.

This project aims to train a new generation of early-stage researchers (ESRs) in the emerging area of human-machine interaction for education and is structured around 15 Individual Research Projects. During four years, 15 selected ESR’s will work within 3 main research topics:

Exploration of the fundamental questions on the perception by people of the interconnections between robots or virtual characters’ appearances and behaviours.
Development of new social learning mechanisms that can deal with different types of human intervention and allow robots and virtual characters to learn in an unconstrained manner.
Development of new approaches for robots and virtual characters’ personalised adaptation to human users in unstructured and dynamically evolving social interactions.

TSW4

Industry-driven workshop: Building industry-guided showcases of the ANIMATAS research

When: 09/12/2020

Where: Online workshop

TSW3

Winter School: Employability skills and conducting research in industry

When: 18/11/2019 22/11/2019

Where: SoftBank Robotics Paris

TSW2

Winter School: Developing technologies in educational settings

When: 04/02/2019 08/02/2019

Where: EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

TSW1

Winter School: Methods from experimental psychology

When: 10/12/2018 14/12/2018

Where: Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany

A final workshop will be organised by the fellow researchers to showcase the results of the PHD’s projects in presence of the keyplayers in social robotics, virtual charcacters, ed-tech communities, both from academic and industrial sector.

EMERGent: Emotions and Emergent States in Groups

When: 03/07/2019 12/07/2019

Where:

TW2

Summer School on Virtual Characters & Computer Game Technologies

When: 20/05/2019 24/05/2019

Where: Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden

TW1

Summer School on Computational social sciences for social robots and embodied virtual characters

When: 05/09/2018 07/09/2018

Where: Sorbonne Université, Paris, France

Each student will spend several months at different partner sites to acquire complementary knowledge, training or/and datasets combined with insights to another research environment contributing to additional transferable skills.