[humaine news] Post Doc Research Position at USC/ICT: Virtual Human Behavior project (VHB)

[Kostas Karpouzis]

Post Doc Research Position:  Virtual Human Behavior project (VHB)

The University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative 
Technologies (ICT) is looking to hire a Post Doc to undertake research 
on virtual human animation, as part of the Virtual Human Behavior 
project. Virtual humans are AI-driven autonomous software agents that 
look like, act like and can interact with humans using spoken dialog in 
virtual environments and video games. A key challenge for virtual human 
research is realizing the physical behavior of the character. Virtual 
humans must be responsive; that is, they must respond to the human user 
as well as other unexpected events in the environment. They must provide 
a sufficient illusion of life so that the human user will be drawn into 
the social scenario. Finally, they must be interpretable; the user must 
be able to interpret their response to situations, including their 
dynamic cognitive and emotional state, using the same verbal and 
non-verbal behaviors that people use to understand one another. The 
challenge of realizing these requirements falls in large measure on the 
animation algorithms and their coordination that constitute the virtual 
human’s "body."

The post doc position will involve taking a leading role in research and 
development for SmartBody, a state-of-the-art open source modular 
framework for animating the body of virtual humans, based on the notion 
of hierarchically connected animation controllers. Controllers in 
SmartBody can employ arbitrary animation algorithms such as key-frame 
interpolation, motion capture or procedural animation. The work will 
involve research into new controllers for SmartBody such as facial 
expression and gesture controllers as well as improvements to core 
algorithms that plan, synchronize and blend behaviors as well as react 
to exogenous events.

Skills:
- Research Background in Computer Graphics and Human Character Animation
- Demonstrated publication ability
- Background in Artificial Intelligence is a plus
- Excellent programming skills

Interested parties should send email to Stacy Marsella, marsella at ict.usc.edu