Job Summary:
Ludo Robotics is dedicated to building general-purpose robotic intelligence systems that are robust and adaptive. The Postdoctoral Fellowship focuses on independent and collaborative research in Robotics, AI, and Human-Robot Interaction, allowing fellows to drive meaningful research contributions that advance the state of the art.
Responsibilities:
• Design and lead an independent research agenda within the fellowship scope, in collaboration with Ludo's research team.
• Conduct experiments, user studies, and field deployments to evaluate hypotheses on real hardware.
• Develop theoretical frameworks and translate them into prototype robot behaviors that bridge research with real-world system implementation.
• Synthesize findings from academic literature across HRI, HCI, social robotics, cognitive science, robot learning, and AI to inform research direction.
• Integrate developed models and algorithms into robot control pipelines and evaluate their real-world performance.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with engineers, designers, and product teams to translate research insights into deployable systems.
• Contribute to establishing metrics and evaluation frameworks for robot behavior and system performance.
• Publicize and disseminate research findings through publications, preprints, talks, and open-source releases.
• Actively participate in team seminars, design reviews, and knowledge-sharing sessions.
Qualifications:
Required:
• PhD (completed or expected by start date) in Human-Robot Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction, Robotics, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, or a closely related field.
• A strong record of research contributions demonstrated through publications, preprints, or equivalent technical output.
• Experience conducting rigorous experiments—user studies, ablations, or system evaluations—and interpreting results clearly.
• Ability to work independently and drive a research agenda with minimal supervision while remaining collaborative and communicative.
Preferred:
• Hands-on prototyping experience with physical robots (humanoid, mobile, or custom platforms) or virtual agents.
• Experience designing and running controlled user studies and participatory design sessions.
• Comfort working across disciplines, translating between user insights, theoretical models, and engineering constraints.
• Familiarity with ROS, Python, or related robotics software tools.
• Experience with large language models (LLMs), particularly in building conversational AI, dialog systems, or applying LLMs to robot behavior such as natural language understanding and task planning.
• Genuine curiosity about people and what makes interactions feel natural, safe, and engaging.
Company:
Ludo Robotics is an AI company that develops robotic intelligence systems for perception, learning, manipulation, and task execution. Founded in 2026, the company is headquartered in San Francisco, USA, with a team of 11-50 employees. The company is currently Early Stage.