Post-Doctoral Research Visit F - M Multisensory Workspace Capture And Inference For Xr Collaboration H/F - INRIA

A propos d'Inria Inria est l'institut national de recherche dédié aux sciences et technologies du numérique. Il emploie 2600 personnes. Ses 215 équipes-projets agiles, en général communes avec des partenaires académiques, impliquent plus de 3900 scientifiques pour relever les défis du numérique, souvent à l'interface d'autres disciplines. L'institut fait appel à de nombreux talents dans plus d'une quarantaine de métiers différents. 900 personnels d'appui à la recherche et à l'innovation contribuent à faire émerger et grandir des projets scientifiques ou entrepreneuriaux qui impactent le monde. Inria travaille avec de nombreuses entreprises et a accompagné la création de plus de 200 start-up. L'institut s'eorce ainsi de répondre aux enjeux de la transformation numérique de la science, de la société et de l'économie.
Post-Doctoral Research Visit F/M Multisensory workspace capture and inference for XR collaboration
Le descriptif de l'offre ci-dessous est en Anglais
Type de contrat : CDD

Niveau de diplôme exigé : Thèse ou équivalent

Fonction : Post-Doctorant

Niveau d'expérience souhaité : Jusqu'à 3 ans

A propos du centre ou de la direction fonctionnelle

The Inria Centre at Rennes University is one of Inria's eight centres and has more than thirty research teams. The Inria Centre is a major and recognized player in the field of digital sciences. It is at the heart of a rich R&D and innovation ecosystem: highly innovative PMEs, large industrial groups, competitiveness clusters, research and higher education players, laboratories of excellence, technological research institute, etc.

Contexte et atouts du poste

Host institution and research team

The candidate will integrate the Seamless team at the at the Centre Inria at Rennes University/IRISA. The Seamless team adopts a multidisciplinary approach in virtual/augmented reality (XR), human perception, human-computer interaction, and human factors, prioritizing the user at the center of the XR revolution. Their work addresses three key challenges: enabling smooth transitions between realities by bridging gaps in perception and interaction for a continuous experience; fostering equal collaboration across realities, ensuring shared awareness and uniform interaction capabilities regardless of individual differences; and advancing implicit, precise evaluation of user experience.

Context

This PhD is framed within the European Horizon Europe project OmenXR, which aims to develop a real-time, multisensory, and human-centered framework for hybrid collaboration in eXtended Reality (XR). To achieve this, OmenXR will first leverage state-of-the-art image-based rendering techniques to enable on-the-fly photorealistic visual fidelity using consumer-grade Mixed Reality (MR) hardware. Additionally, it will create a multisensory experience that anchors all collaborators in a sensory-coherent environment. Finally, OmenXR will utilize real-time reconstruction and understanding to enable novel forms of hybrid collaboration, integrating remote users, teleoperated robots, and intelligent virtual agents.

Mission confiée

The candidate will focus on one to the two following research domains:

Multimodal Reconstruction and Inference: The candidate will conduct research on methods for capturing multimodal information from physical environments in real time. This includes leveraging advanced techniques to infer scene properties such as location, object detection, and tactile characteristics from visual data. The work will explore the integration of foundation models to enhance scene understanding and enrich representations with multimodal information, addressing the balance between realism and plausibility.

Haptic and Tactile Rendering: The candidate will design and evaluate haptic interfaces and algorithms to enable spatialized tactile rendering in extended reality. This could involve the creation of modular, lightweight wearable actuators that combine vibrotactile, force-feedback, and skin-stretch mechanisms. Alternatively, cross-modal rendering techniques will be employed to compensate for hardware limitations, and adaptive encoding schemes will balance sensory fidelity with user cognitive load. Effectiveness will be evaluated through quantitative metrics and qualitative user studies.

Furthermore, the candidate will work on user-driven interactive tools for creating and authoring multimodal experiences. This includes developing tools to assist users during the capture process, providing visual feedback and guidance for efficient reconstruction. Additionally, the candidate will explore methods for users to edit captured information, enabling corrections or adjustments for aesthetic or accessibility purposes.

Additional Duties

Joint PhD Supervision: The postdoc will co-supervise PhD students working on related topics within the project, providing mentorship and technical guidance to ensure alignment with the project's goals.

Research Management: The candidate could contribute to the project management duties, including progress reporting, milestone tracking, and collaboration with international partners. They will also assist in organizing workshops, meetings, and dissemination activities such as publications and conference presentations.

Principales activités

The candidate is expected to produce high-impact publications in top-tier conferences and journals. They will develop functional prototypes of multimodal reconstruction, rendering, or interaction tools and contribute open-source datasets or software to the research community. Strong interdisciplinary collaboration with project partners will be essential.

Compétences

The ideal candidate will have a strong background in computer graphics, haptics, extended reality, or human-computer interaction, depending on their selected focus. They should possess experience with machine learning, proficiency in programming languages such as Python or C#, and familiarity with user studies and evaluation methodologies.

Excellent communication skills and the ability to work in a multidisciplinary team are required.

Avantages

- Subsidized meals
- 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
- Access to vocational training

Rémunération

Monthly gross salary from 2 788 euros.

• Python
• Anglais
• Machine learning
• C#