2026_IR_36_DEI – Vision-Language-Action Models for Adaptive Exoskeleton Locomotion

Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione - Università degli studi di Padova; Italia; On-site; EUR 32,000 - 48,000; Full time

Job summary

The Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione - Università degli studi di Padova invites applications to contribute to a project on a Vision Language-Action (VLA) framework for guiding lower-limb exoskeleton locomotion in daily living contexts. The goal is to fuse visual perception, semantic interpretation and motor action generation to plan context-aware steps.

The research will analyze multimodal data, develop a VLA architecture for wearable robotics, address safety concerns, and validate

Job description

Organisation/Company Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione - Università degli studi di Padova Research Field Engineering Researcher Profile Recognised Researcher (R2) Leading Researcher (R4) First Stage Researcher (R1) Established Researcher (R3) Application Deadline 16 Oct 2026 - 13:00 (UTC) Country Italy Type of Contract To be defined Job Status Not Applicable Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

The goal of the project is to develop an innovative control framework based on Vision Language-Action (VLA) models to guide lower-limb exoskeleton locomotion in daily living environments. The system will integrate visual perception, semantic interpretation, and the direct generation of motor actions to plan the most suitable step sequence based on the environment. Specifically, the project aims to: (i) analyze the first multimodal dataset (vision, kinematics) of exoskeleton walking in daily living contexts; (ii) develop a specific VLA architecture for wearable robotics that jointly considers video streams, natural language instructions, and the user's kinematic state; (iii) model and address the safety and reliability of the VLA model's decisions; (iv) develop planning strategies to generate not only a single step, but a coordinated and safe sequence of steps based on environmental semantics and geometry; (v) validate the system on a real exoskeleton available in the laboratory.

• OTHER

Eligibility of fellows: country/ies of residence:

• OTHER

Eligibility of fellows: nationality/ies: