Postdoctoral Researcher in Socially Aware Autonomy: Pedestrian Intention Prediction, Communication, and Real-Time Risk Estimation
About this role
Aalto University is where science and art meet technology and business. We shape a sustainable future by making research breakthroughs in and across our disciplines, sparking the game changers of tomorrow and creating novel solutions to major global challenges. Our community is made up of 16 000 students and 5 200 employees, including 446 professors. Our campus is in Espoo, Greater Helsinki, Finland. Diversity is part of who we are, and we actively work to ensure our community's diversity and inclusiveness. This is why we warmly encourage qualified candidates from all backgrounds to join our community.
The Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation is now inviting applications for a
Postdoctoral Researcher in Socially Aware Autonomy: Pedestrian Intention Prediction, Communication, and Real-Time Risk Estimation
The project advances predictive, human-aware autonomy for industrial vehicles and robots operating among people. The focus includes predicting pedestrian intentions, communicating machine actions, and estimating/mitigating risk in real time-toward safer, smoother interactions in urban and industrial environments. Results are disseminated through publications, demos, and stakeholder events.
The work will be conducted within the Mobile Robotics Group at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation in the School of Electrical Engineering in Aalto University, Finland. Supervision and collaboration of the project are by Assistant Professor Tomasz Kucner and Professor Simo Särkkä.
Role and responsibilities
Lead the research thread on socially aware autonomous systems, including:
Pedestrian intention prediction and trajectory forecasting
Human-machine communication and action legibility
Real-time risk estimation and proactive safety behavior
Integrate perception and prediction with robust, energy-/communication-efficient sensor fusion and distributed computation where applicable (in collaboration with the Sensor Informatics and Medical