We are looking for an engineer to work on an embodied conversational agent (ECA) system (http://www.iut.univ-paris8.fr/greta/).
The project will be done in 2 phases:
-	develop a modular distributed architecture for a human-machine interactive system
-	integrate the ECA system in this architecture and make it real-time

Context:
The project deals with ECAs, virtual humanoids able to dialog with users. Several tools have been developed so far (computational model of nonverbal behavior, computation of the facial expression and gaze behavior for given communicative acts in a dialog, facial and body animation player based on MPEG-4 and H-Anim). The system takes as input a text to be said by the agent. The text has been enriched with information on the manner the text ought to be said (i.e. with which communicative acts it should be said). The behavioral engine computes the synchronized verbal and nonverbal behaviors of the agent. 

Work to be done:
The first part of the work deals with the elaboration of a modular distributed architecture. The ECA system is one of the elements of an interactive human-machine system. This last one includes a visual perception module, a dialog generation module, etc. The system architecture will be developed using Psyclone that allows one to build modular distributed system:
http://www.mindmakers.org/projects/Psyclone
The communication protocol OpenAir will be used to link the various modules of the architecture. More information on this protocol can be found at:
http://www.mindmakers.org/openair/airPage.jsp

The second part of the project consists in integrating the ECA system in this architecture. In a first step this system will need to be modularized. The existing code will have to be divided in one module per modality (gaze, facial expression, gesture, etc), one module for multimodal planner and one for the animation player.
The system will also have to be realtime. As the input text is parsed the system will compute the behaviors and call the animation module. Continuity between behaviors will have to be maintained.
The code will be documented using UML.

Pre-requisite: C++, 3D animation
Project Length: 6 month
Place: IUT of Montreuil, University of Paris8. This position would be the perfect opportunity  to somebody from an English speaking country to move to Paris as our institute is very near Paris!
Stipend: between 1200 and 2000 euros per month net depending on applicant qualification
Contact : 
Catherine Pelachaud
pelachaud@iut.univ-paris8.fr
http://www.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~pelachaud/