Postdoc opportunity in language, reasoning, and planning at ARL

[Garrett Warnell]

The US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is seeking a Postdoctoral Researcher to bridge the gap between humans and autonomous systems by developing a controlled language to reason and communicate about human intent as it applies to commands a robot receives. In robotics, practitioners often program autonomous systems by developing monolithic behaviors that, when correctly parameterized, will cause the system to act as desired. However, setting these parameters is often more art than science, and we cannot expect an average user to effectively task the system unless they have only the simplest tasks in mind. ARL desires a controlled language that both concisely describes the capabilities of autonomous systems, as well as enables common-sense reasoning and representation of implicit goals that will let the system fill instructional gaps from novice users.

In this position, the Researcher will work on a cross-disciplinary team comprised of researchers in computational linguistics, computer vision, machine learning, and experimental robotics to develop a system for interacting with humans—the goal being to develop and evolve complex plans carried out by autonomous systems. The primary responsibilities of the Researcher will be learning how we can use language to link the domains of intent reasoning and action, and developing such a language to enable experiments with humans and robot teams operating in dynamic environments.

The candidate must have a PhD or equivalent degree, and should have an interest and background in formal methods, knowledge representation and reasoning, computational linguistics, control policies, or AI planning.

The position is available immediately with a duty location at the Adelphi Laboratory Center (ALC), Adelphi, MD.

To learn more about the position, or to apply, please send questions or a CV to Dr. Ethan Stump via email at ethan.a.s...@mail.mil.