Call for Papers
Third
International Workshop on
Epigenetic
Robotics:
Modeling
Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems
http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org
Location: Boston University
Boston, MA, USA
(held after the Cognitive Science Society Meeting)
Submission Deadline:
Extended Deadline:
This workshop focuses on combining developmental psychology and robotics, and on three properties of natural and artificial systems:
(a) the embodiment of the system;
(b) its situatedness in a physical and social environment;
(c) a prolonged developmental process through which varied and complex cognitive and perceptual structures emerge as a result of an embodied system interacting with a physical and social environment.
Epigenetic robotics includes basic research goals of interdisciplinary integration between developmental psychology and robotics. Psychological theory and empirical evidence should be used to inform epigenetic robotic models, and these models should be used as theoretical tools to make experimental predictions in developmental psychology. Epigenetic robotics research also includes practical goals of: (1) enabling robots and other artificial systems to better adapt to their environments, and to better adapt to changes in these environments, and (2) easing the problem of programming robots—by programming the robots to develop skills for any particular environment instead of programming robots for specific environments (see also Weng, McClelland, Pentland, Sporns, Stockman, Sur, & Thelen, 2001).
Subject Areas include, but are not limited to:
· The role of motivation, emotions, and value systems in development;
· The development of: concepts, consciousness and self-awareness, emotion, imitation, intentionality, intersubjectivity, joint attention, learning, motivation, non-verbal and verbal communication, self, sensorimotor schemata, shared meaning and symbolic reference, social learning, social relationships, social understanding (“mind reading”, “theory of mind”), value systems;
· Interaction between innate structure, ongoing developing structure, and experience;
· Related issues in algorithms, robotics, simulated robots, and embodied systems;
· Strong AI (true intelligence and autonomy) versus weak AI;
· Related issues from human and nonhuman empirical studies.
For summaries of the papers from the first two workshops see Zlatev and Balkenius (2001), Prince (2002a), and Prince (2002b).
Please send any questions to the workshop co-chairs: Luc Berthouze (Luc.Berthouze@aist.go.jp) and Christopher G. Prince (chris@cprince.com).
Cognitive & Neural
Systems Department,
Communications
Research
The
workshop is being held on campus at
György Gergely
(Institute for Psychological Research,
Rod Grupen (Laboratory
for Perceptual Robotics,
Deb Roy (Media Lab, MIT, USA)
Papers not exceeding eight (8) pages should be submitted electronically (PDF or Postscript) as attachment files to Luc Berthouze (Luc.Berthouze@aist.go.jp). Extended abstracts (maximum two pages) can also be submitted, and will be presented as posters (extended abstracts should also be submitted in PDF or Postscript as attachments to Luc Berthouze (Luc.Berthouze@aist.go.jp). Further instructions to authors will be posted on the workshop web page: http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org
Christian Balkenius (Cognitive Science,
Luc Berthouze
(Neuroscience Research Institute, AIST,
Daniel Bullock (Cognitive & Neural
Systems Department,
Hideki Kozima (Communications Research
Christopher Prince (Computer
Science,
Georgi Stojanov (Computer Science Institute, SS Cyril and
Christian Balkenius
(Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden)
Aude Billard (Computer
Science Department, USC, USA)
Luc Berthouze (Neuroscience Research Institute, AIST,
Japan)
Daniel Bullock (Cognitive & Neural
Systems Department, Boston University, USA)
Kerstin Dautenhahn (Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of
Hertfordshire, UK)
Yiannis Demiris
(Intelligent and Interactive Systems, Imperial College, UK)
Peter Gärdenfors (Cognitive Science, Lund University,
Sweden)
Philippe Gaussier (Universite
de Cergy-Pointoise & ENSEA, France)
Frédéric Kaplan (Sony Computer Science Lab Paris,
France)
Hideki Kozima (Communications Research Laboratory, Japan)
Max Lungarella (Neuroscience Research Institute,
AIST, Japan)
Yuval Marom (Division of Informatics, University of
Edinburgh, UK)
Georgio Metta (LIRA-Lab,
Genoa, Italy)
Chrystopher Nehaniv (Adaptive Systems Research
Group, University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Jacqueline Nadel (CNRS, France)
Christopher G. Prince (Computer Science, University of Minnesota Duluth, USA)
Rolf Pfeifer (AI Lab, University of Zurich, Switzerland)
Deb Roy (Media Laboratory, MIT, USA)
Brian Scassellati (Department of Computer Science,
Yale University, USA)
Stefan Schaal (Computer Science Department, USC, USA)
Matthew Schlesinger (Psychology
Department, Southern Illinois University, USA)
Georgi Stojanov (Computer Science Institute,
SS Cyril and Methodius University, Macedonia)
Gert Westermann (School of
Psychology, Birkbeck College, UK)
Tom Ziemke (Department of Computer Science,
University of Skovde, Sweden)
Papers and poster abstracts will be published in a proceedings, and archived at CogPrints (http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk).
Zlatev, J. & Balkenius, C. (2001).
Introduction: Why “epigenetic robotics”? Proceedings of the First International
Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic
Systems (pp. 1-4).
Prince, C. G. (2002a).
Introduction: The Second International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics. In C.
G. Prince, Y. Demiris, Y. Marom,
H. Kozima, & C. Balkenius
(Eds.) Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Epigenetic
Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems.
Prince, C. G. (2002b). Opening speech. The Second International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems. Available at: http://www.cprince.com/PubRes/EpigeneticRobotics2002/intro/intro.pdf
Weng, J., McClelland, J., Pentland, A., Sporns, O., Stockman,