From juergen at idsia.ch Mon Jun 4 08:31:29 2007 From: juergen at idsia.ch (Juergen Schmidhuber) Date: Mon Jun 4 08:31:33 2007 Subject: [DevRob] Self-modeling resilient robots Message-ID: <2c4b48ffdeeb45372cf2352221b037f0@idsia.ch> Dear colleagues, if you are interested in self-modeling robots that can heal themselves, I'd like to draw your attention to the pioneering work of Gloye-F?rster, Wiesel, Tenchio, & Simon (IT, 2005). They equipped RoboCup robots with "self-models" based on artificial neural networks, to model current properties of their 4 wheel omnidirectional drives. They showed that when a robot gets damaged and is no longer able to execute a precise driving pattern, it can heal itself by quickly adapting its model of the relation between motor commands and sensory inputs, and using the modified model to plan and optimize future driving trajectories. Here is an overview with a link to the original paper: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/resilientmachines.html J?rgen (Sorry if you already knew that!) From chris at cprince.com Thu Jun 14 16:09:47 2007 From: chris at cprince.com (Christopher Prince) Date: Thu Jun 14 16:09:57 2007 Subject: [DevRob] 2nd Call for Papers: Epigenetic Robotics 2007 (Extended Deadline) Message-ID: <4671A08B.7010602@cprince.com> Call for Papers: Epigenetic Robotics 2007 (Extended Deadline) 5-7 November 2007, Piscataway, NJ, USA Seventh International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org Email: epirob07@epigenetic-robotics.org Location: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ, USA *Extended* Submission Deadline: 1 August 2007 Keynote Speakers: Hod Lipson Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Computing & Information Science, Cornell University, USA Daniel Messinger Department of Psychology, University of Miami, USA Carolyn Rovee-Collier and Peter Gerhardstein (co-presenter) Department of Psychology, Rutgers, NJ, USA (Rovee-Collier) Department of Psychology, Binghamton University-SUNY, NY, USA (Gerhardstein) Conference Themes: In the past 6 years, the Epigenetic Robotics annual conference has established itself as a unique place where original interdisciplinary research from developmental sciences, neuroscience, biology, 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 has goals including: (1) understanding biological systems by the interdisciplinary integration of social and engineering sciences and (2) enabling robots and other artificial systems to autonomously develop skills for new environments (instead of programming them to solve problems in fixed environments). Psychological theory and empirical evidence is being used to inform epigenetic robotic models, and these models can be used as theoretical tools to make experimental predictions in developmental psychology. 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; * Using robots as theoretical tools (e.g., to make predictions) in experiments with children; * Using robots in applied settings (e.g., autism therapy) with children; * Architectures for autonomous development; * Robots that can undergo morphological changes and how they can be used to study the interplay between cognitive and morphological development; Important Dates: 1 August 2007: Deadline for submission of papers & posters 12 Sept 2007: Notification of acceptance of papers & posters 12 Oct 2007: Deadline for camera ready papers 5-7 Nov 2007: EpiRob07 @ Rutgers Modes of Submission: (1) Regular Submission (8-page max). After review, regular submissions will either be accepted or rejected (no revision as short papers or posters). Regular submissions will be allocated 8 pages in the Proceedings. (2) Abstract Submission (1-page max). After review, selected authors will be invited to present a poster. Abstract submissions will be allocated 1 page in the Proceedings. Submission instructions will be available from the EpiRob website: http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org Related Events: IROS (Intelligent Robots and Systems) http://www.crim.ncsu.edu/iros2007 29 October - 2 November 2007 (San Diego) Organizing Committee: Christian Balkenius (Lund University, Sweden) Luc Berthouze (University of Sussex, UK) Hideki Kozima (NICT, Japan) Michael Littman (Rutgers, USA) Christopher G. Prince (University of Minnesota Duluth, USA) Program Committee: Pierre Andry (ENSEA, France) Minoru Asada (Osaka University, Japan) Christian Balkenius (Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden) Mark Bickhard (Lehigh University, USA) Alexander Bernardino (Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa, Portugal) Luc Berthouze (University of Sussex, UK) Nadia Berthouze (University College London, UK) Aude Billard (EPFL, Switzerland) Lola Canamero (University of Hertfordshire, UK) Robert Clowes (University of Sussex, UK) Kerstin Dautenhahn (University of Hertfordshire, UK) Yiannis Demiris (Imperial College, UK) Luciano Fadiga (University of Ferrara, Italy) Simone Fiori (Universit? Politecnica delle Marche, Italy) Paul Fitzpatrick (CSAIL, MIT, USA) Philippe Gaussier (Universite de Cergy-Pointoise & ENSEA, France) Lakshmi Gogate (SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn, USA) Rod Grupen (University of Massachusetts, USA) George Hollich (Purdue University, USA) Fr?d?ric Kaplan (EPFL, Switzerland) Benjamin Kuipers (University of Texas, USA) Hideki Kozima (NICT, Japan) Max Lungarella (University of Tokyo, Japan) Lisa Meeden (Swarthmore college, USA) Giorgio Metta (LIRA-Lab, Genoa, Italy) Jacqueline Nadel (CNRS, France) Yukie Nagai (NICT, Japan) Chrystopher Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire, UK) Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Paris, France) Rolf Pfeifer (University of Zurich, Switzerland) Christopher G. Prince (University of Minnesota Duluth, USA) Arnaud Revel (CNRS, ENSEA, University of Cergy Pontoise, France) Brian Scassellati (Yale University, USA) Matthew Schlesinger (Southern Illinois University, USA) Sylvain Sirois (Manchester University, UK) Michael Spratling (Birkbeck College, UK) Georgi Stojanov (SS Cyril and Methodius University, Macedonia) Gert Westermann (Oxford Brookes University, UK) Tom Ziemke (University of Skovde, Sweden) For questions or more information, please contact: epirob07@epigenetic-robotics.org From wiiat at kis-lab.com Tue Jun 19 04:38:10 2007 From: wiiat at kis-lab.com (Jia Hu) Date: Tue Jun 19 04:38:16 2007 Subject: [DevRob] Final Call for Tutorial: IEEE/WIC/ACM WI-IAT'07 Message-ID: <200706190838.l5J8cCdS014197@emergent.brynmawr.edu> [Apologies if you receive this more than once] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT 2007) Silicon Valley, USA, November 2-5, 2007 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++ Call for Tutorials ++++++++++++++++++ The 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conference on Web Intelligence (WI'07) and Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'07) takes place on November 2-5, 2007, in Silicon Valley, the center of high tech and web technology. The IEEE/WIC/ACM 2007 joint conference is organized by San Jose State University, and sponsored by IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Intelligent Informatics (TCII), Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC), and ACM-SIGART. Homepage: http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/wi07/wi/?index=tutorial and http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/wi07/iat/?index=tutorial WI 2007 and IAT 2007 will include tutorials providing in-depth background on subjects that are of broad interest to the intelligent agent community. Both short (2 hours) and long (half day) tutorials will be considered. The following is a *non-exclusive* list of preferred topic areas for tutorial proposals: Web Intelligence: - Intelligent/Semantic Web Services - Intelligent Wireless Web and Ubiquitous Computing - Rules and Inference Engines for the Web - Semantic Web Concepts and Techniques for Security and Trust - Service-Oriented Computing - Social Networks and Social Intelligence - e-learning and e-science - Web Intelligence and Education Intelligent Agent Technology: - Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation - Agent Technologies in e-Business Systems - Agent-Mediated Knowledge Management - Peer-to-Peer Models for Multi-Agent Systems - Agent-Based Grid Computing Submission Details: Proposals for tutorials should consist of an outline and background information on the presenter(s). The tutorial outline should be limited to 2 pages and contain the following information: 1. Title and abstract of the tutorial 2. Proposed duration: 2 hours or half-day 3. Intended audience: to whom is the tutorial of interest 4. Prerequisite knowledge: what the attendees should already know 5. Detailed outline The background information on the presenter(s) should be limited to 1-2 pages and contain: 1. Names, affiliations, homepages and contact details 2. Short biographies 3. Information about previous tutorials given by the same presenters (title, location, number of attendees, etc.) Tutorial materials such as handouts and slides should be included if already available, but are not required for submission. Please send your proposal to pawan@cs.smu.ca or Pawan.Lingras@smu.ca Important Dates: July 1, 2007 Tutorial submissions July 10, 2007 Acceptance notices October 1, 2007 Camera-ready copy of tutorial handouts November 2-5, 2007 WI-IAT'07 tutorials Tutorial Chair: Pawan Lingras, Saint Mary's University, Canada Email: pawan@cs.smu.ca or Pawan.Lingras@smu.ca +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++