From py at csl.sony.fr Mon Jul 17 11:43:15 2006 From: py at csl.sony.fr (Pierre-Yves Oudeyer) Date: Mon Jul 17 11:44:14 2006 Subject: [DevRob] Call for Registration: 6th International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics Message-ID: <44BBB013.5010204@csl.sony.fr> Call for Registration: Epigenetic Robotics 2006, 20-22 September 2006, Paris, France Sixth International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems website: http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org contact information: epirob06@csl.sony.fr Location: Hopital de la Salp?tri?re, Paris, France REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN on http://www.csl.sony.fr/epirob2006/registration.htm early registration fees are available until July, 31 Confirmed invited speakers 2006 Karen Adolph (Psychology Dpt, New York University, USA) Andrew Barto (Computer Science Dpt, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA) Philippe Rochat (Psychology Dpt, University of Emory, USA) Gregor Schoener (Institut f?r Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universit?t-Bochum, Germany) Bruno Wicker (Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives de la Mediterran?e, France) Conference Themes In the past 5 years, the Epigenetic Robotics annual workshop has established itself as a unique place where original research combining developmental sciences, neuroscience, biology, and cognitive robotics and artificial intelligence is being presented. Epigenetic systems, either natural or artificial, share a prolonged developmental process through which varied and complex cognitive and perceptual structures emerge as a result of the interaction of an embodied system with a physical and social environment. Epigenetic robotics includes the two-fold goal of understanding biological systems by the interdisciplinary integration between social and engineering sciences and, simultaneously, that of enabling robots and artificial systems to develop skills for any particular environment instead of programming them for solving particular goals for the environment in which they happen to reside. Psychological theory and empirical evidence is being used to inform epigenetic robotic models, and these models should be used as theoretical tools to make experimental predictions in developmental psychology. This year we particularly encourage research resulting from actual interdisciplinary collaboration. Epigenetic Robotics themes include, but are not limited to: * The development of: emotion, imitation, synchrony processing, intersubjectivity, joint attention, intentionality, non-verbal and verbal communication, sensorimotor schemata, shared meaning and symbolic reference, social learning, social relationships, social cognition ("mind reading", "theory of mind"); * The scope and limits of maturation, the mechanisms of open-ended development; * The mechanisms of stage formation and stage transitions; * The epistemological foundations of using robots to study development; * The role of motivations, emotions, and value systems in development; * Interaction between innate structure, ongoing developing structure, and experience; * The interplay between embodiment, learning biases and environment; * The differences between learning and development; * Algorithms for self-supervision, autonomous exploration, representation making, and methods for evolving new representations during ontogeny; * Robots that can undergo morphological changes and how they can be used to study the interplay between cognitive and morphological development; Tutorials Two tutorials will be organized during the conference - "Featural processing of auditory and visual inputs for epigenetic robots " Christian Balkenius & Christopher G. Prince - "Development of imitation and emotion in human and robots: cross fertilization of research" Organized by Philippe Gaussier and Jacqueline Nadel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://emergent.brynmawr.edu/pipermail/devrob/attachments/20060717/6322cb50/attachment.htm