Assistant Engineer – Development of additive fabrication methods and maintenance of 3D printing material F/H

Within the context of ADVHANDTURE, the goal of the assistant engineer is to be a support contact for the design of multimodal tactile devices dedicated to the hand for interacting with immersive environments. The assistant engineer will therefore be the main contact point for gathering the additive fabrication material dedicated to the ADVHANDTURE project. She/he will develop and maintain the appropriate methodologies and devices to design the haptic interfaces. She/he will provide active guidance, assistance and support to PhD students, engineers and other team members of the ADVHANDTURE project. She/he will be in charge of the maintenance and enhancement of manufacturing tools, as well as proposing improvements on design and manufacturing of existing haptic devices and effective technical solutions for emerging technical challenges of the ADVHANDTURE project.

INSA Rennes is the most important public engineering school in Brittany. It welcomes 2040 students and apprentices. More than 340 engineers, 60 masters students and 40 PhDs graduate each year. With 9 teaching departments, including 7 engineering specialties and 1 apprenticeship program, and 7 research laboratories, INSA employs around 540 public-sector staff (researchers, teachers, administrative and support staff) and more than 70 part-time employees from companies. These last years have seen an explosion of novel tactile technologies providing various haptic sensations across all the user’s body. However, while these technologies have now been made available, virtual reality systems are still struggling to convey compelling tactile sensations for 3D interaction. The project ADVHANDTURE aims at introducing an original computational approach for handling multimodal tactile feedback within immersive environments. For that purpose, the project relies on a multidisciplinary methodology, gathering knowledge in human perception, haptics, virtual reality mechanics and 3D interactions.