Research Associate in Human-Robot Interaction

King's College London; Greater London; On-site; GBP 38,000 - 52,000; Full time

Job summary

King’s College London invites applications for a Postdoctoral Research Associate to join the CO-STAR program in the Department of Engineering. The project brings together academia and NHS partners to design socially intelligent assistive robots for healthcare.

You will work within the SAIR Lab on multimodal machine learning and human-centered embodied AI, collaborating with clinicians, patients, and engineers to advance autonomous robotic systems in clinical settings.

Job description

Research Associate in Human-Robot Interaction Department : EngineeringAbout usWe are recruiting a motivated Postdoctoral Research Associate to join CO-STAR (CO-designing Socially inTelligent Assistive Robots for Future Healthcare), a research programme bringing together King’s College London, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

CO-STAR aims to advance socially intelligent assistive robots for future healthcare, combining cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence and robotics with human-centred co-design and real-world clinical deployment.

We are looking for a candidate who can join the project in January 2027 or soon thereafter.The successful candidate will join the Department of Engineering at King’s College London and become a member of the Social AI & Robotics Lab (SAIR), led by Dr Oya Celiktutan.

They will work closely with researchers, engineers, healthcare professionals, patients and other stakeholders at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT), providing a unique opportunity to conduct cutting-edge robotics research in close partnership with a major NHS organisation.SAIR conducts research in multimodal machine learning and human-centred embodied AI, with a particular focus on developing autonomous agents that can perceive, understand and interact effectively with humans.

The lab’s research addresses challenges in multimodal perception, human behaviour understanding and forecasting, robot learning, navigation and manipulation, and socially aware human–robot interaction.SAIR’s research has been supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering, EPSRC, the Royal Society, and EU Horizon programmes, as well as through industrial collaborations.

The lab’s research has received several distinctions, including the Best Paper Award at IEEE RO-MAN 2022, the NVIDIA CCS Best Student Paper Award Runner‑Up at IEEE FG 2021, and First Place and Honourable Mention Awards at the ICCV UDIVA Challenge 2021. About the roleImagine a future where robots meaningfully assist people with limited mobility and support patients and clinicians across healthcare environments.

Assistive robotics has the potential to transform independence, wellbeing, and the delivery of care.

Advances in AI are rapidly expanding what robots can perceive, understand, and do, bringing this future closer than ever.

Yet a critical gap remains between technical capability and real‑world deployment: robots still struggle to understand human behaviour, adapt to complex social situations, and operate safely and appropriately alongside people.

Using the hospital as a living lab to advance human–robot interaction and integration with clinical workflows, the CO-STAR project aims to bridge this gap.CO-STAR will engineer the next generation of socially intelligent assistive robots