Post-Doctoral Research Visit F/M Postdoc in Foundation Models for Human-Robot Interaction

Inria, the French national research institute for the digital sciences; France; On-site; EUR 42,000 - 54,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Partial reimbursement of public travel

Annual leave 7 weeks + 10 RTT days

Teleworking after 6 months

Flexible working hours

Professional equipment provided

Social, cultural and sports events

Job summary

Inria, the French national research institute for the digital sciences, invites applications for a postdoctoral researcher in robotics and AI. The role focuses on natural language and foundation models to enable safe, collaborative human-robot interaction across diverse robots and environments.

The successful candidate will contribute to the HUCEBOT team, work closely with PhD students and engineers, and participate in the ENACT Cluster-AI project activities, with emphasis on safety, planning

Qualifications

• Ideal candidates have significant research experience in AI and robotics.
• Publications at top robotics/AI venues are desirable.
• Experience with real robots and HRI is advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Implement, test and develop novel algorithms for real robots using language models.
• Write papers and present at conferences.
• Document and validate software; conduct mandatory experiments with real robots.
• Supervise team engineers and PhD students; participate in ENACT activities.

Skills

Python

Pytorch

LLMs

VLMs

Robotics

Education

PhD in AI/Robotics

Tools

Foundation Models

LLMs

Job description

Inria, the French national research institute for the digital sciences

Organisation/Company Inria, the French national research institute for the digital sciences Research Field Computer science Researcher Profile Recognised Researcher (R2) Application Deadline 7 Nov 2026 - 00:00 (UTC) Country France Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Hours Per Week 38.5 Offer Starting Date 1 Jan 2027 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Reference Number 2026-10582 Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

The HUCEBOT team is dedicated to advancing algorithms for human-centered robots: robots that are not working autonomously in isolation, but that instead react, interact, collaborate, and assist humans. To do so, these robots need to intertwine a multi-contact whole-body controller, a digital simulation of the interacting humans, and machine learning models to predict and respond to human movements and intentions. In a crescendo of complexity, the team tackles scenarios that involve collaboration with cobots,assistance with exoskeletons, and collaboration with humanoid robots. The application domains span from industrial robotics to space teleoperation.

The main robots of the team are the mobile robot Shelfy, TiagoPro bimanual mobile manipulator, the Unitree G1 humanoid, and the Talos humanoid robot. The team also works with Franka cobots and exoskeletons.

The team currently consists of about 20+ members, including permanent researchers, PhD students and post-doctoral students.

Serena Ivaldi, head of HUCEBOT, is holding the chair in Robotics and AI of the Cluster IA ENACT project ( https://cluster-ia-enact.ai/ ) that is funding this PhD thesis. In the chair, she wants to push the research inNatural Language to assist humans in different scenarios of collaboration with robots, where safety is paramount. The ambition is to create a foundation that bridges natural language commands into interpretable commands for the robot, leading to robot actions that are contextualized and intrinsically safe.

Recent advancements in foundation models in VLMs and VLAs has drastically improved the contextual understanding and motion control for simple tasks. They allow the robot to execute plans and execute a task from visual input alone. However, there are known problems of trajectory hallucinations, safety and scaling to the long horizon problems. These problems make it difficult to make robust and reliable autonomous robot architectures. Tuning these generalized architectures and combining them with classical motion planning and control significantly improves the success rate.

When the robots have to work along with humans, strong safety guarantees are required along with clear understanding of how to interact with humans. We want to exploit the contextual understanding and action planning skills of VLMs and VLAs for motion planning in HRI with focus on safety, interaction and communication modelling and environmental adaptability.

Socially aware robot navigation across various kinds of robots and environments will be the application area of this research position.

This postdoctoral researcher will be funded by the ENACT project,but will contribute more generally to theresearch of the team in robot learning, HRI.

Main activities: implement, test and develop novel algorithms for real robots that use language models and foundation models. Write papers and present them at conferences. Write, test, validate and document its associated software. Experiments with real robots are mandatory.

This position involves contributing in the supervision of the team engineers and PhD students, together with the supervisor.

Thepostdoc will also be involved in the activities organized by the Cluster-AI project ENACT, which may involve dissemination actions, meetings and presentations to relevant stakeholders (Europe, France, industries, etc).

Good skills in Python (Pytorch). Ideally, prior experience with LLM, VLM and Foundation Models.

Goodknowledgeof robotics.

Languages: English (English is the official language of the team and many members do no speak French).

Proactivity and curiosity, daily communication, ability to work in a team are fundamental.

Specific Requirements

The ideal candidatehas significant research experience in artificial intelligence and robotics, robot learning, HRI, navigation, planning or analog topics. Ideal candidates have previous publications at top robotics and AI venues, such as ICRA, HRI, RSS, CORL, CVPR, ICML, Humanoids, and proven experience with real robots.

Languages FRENCH Level Basic

Languages ENGLISH Level Good

Additional Information

• Partial reimbursement of public transport costs
• Leave: 7 weeks of annual leave + 10 extra days off due to RTT (statutory reduction in working hours) + possibility of exceptional leave (sick children, moving home, etc.)
• Possibility of teleworking (after 6 months of employment) and flexible organization of working hours
• Professional equipment available (videoconferencing, loan of computer equipment, etc.)
• Social, cultural and sports events and activities