NEWS 10 Dec 2006

• Research Roadmap Project in euCognition Network
  One of the important themes of this symposium was the need to identify long term requirements for satisfactory theories and working models, and to use those long term requirements to define a research roadmap. That is also the theme of an initiative that is part of the euCognition network (which funded this symposium). The roadmap initiative is described here. It will be discussed on the second day of the Second Six-Monthly Meeting of euCognition at Munich Airport Conference Centre, 11-12 Jan 2007.

• Post Symposium Contributions
  Some additions have been made since the symposium, including insertion of most of the presentations of invited speakers. Additional submitted contributions are below.

• Report from Grand Challenges Conference available
  A conference on the UKCRC Grand challenges was held in Glasgow in March 2006. There's a report on the conference here http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.8105 and a specific report on GC5 here: http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.4717

• List of speakers
  Includes information about invited speakers and pointers to their presentations, also available in a single package, below.
  Last updated 10 Dec 2006

• File containing papers/presentations by Invited Speakers (incomplete) (PDF 15MB)
  Currently contains contributions by

  Jackie Chappell
  Mike Denham
  Steve Furber
  Jeff Krichmar
  Mark Lee
  Pete Redgrave
  Murray Shanahan
  Aaron Sloman
  Tom Ziemke

• Programme for the symposium

• Abstracts of invited talks and posters (PDF)

• Symposium aims and themes (PDF)
  (Last updated 5 May 2006)

• Poster Summaries

• Papers by poster presenters (PDF)

Post symposium contributions

(Please send contributions, preferably in the form of URLs linking to online documents, to Aaron Sloman.)

• 10 Dec 2006: Tom Ziemke's presentation is now available online.

• 1 Jul 2006: How an animal or robot with 3-D manipulation skills experiences the world (PDF)
  Aaron Sloman

• (PDF) New mathematical foundations for AI and Alife: Are the necessary conditions for animal consciousness sufficient for the design of intelligent machines?
  Rodrick Wallace, The New York State Psychiatric Institute
  (Updated 11 Jun 2006)

• John Jackson, who was at the symposium, and made some contributions from the floor has now started a moderated 'listserve' based discussion list called 'Mindmechanisms', accessible here: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/mindmechanisms.html
  (Click on the month to read messages in the archive.)

• (HTML) Sensorimotor vs objective contingencies: A critique of sensorimotor theories.
  Aaron Sloman

• (HTML) A draft, incomplete discussion of requirements for the 'fully deliberative' subset of a human or human-lie architecture.
  Aaron Sloman

The Conference: AISB'06 Convention.

This Symposium

This is a sequel to both the two day Tutorial on Representation and Learning in Robots and Animals held at IJCAI'05 in Edinburgh, July 2005, and two UK Research Grand Challenge Conferences, one held in Newcastle in March, 2004, and one one to be held in Glasgow, 22-24 March 2006.

An expanded version of the slide presentation on GC5 given at the 2004 conference is here (PDF).

Background information about this Grand Challenge can be found here.

The symposium is intended to promote the research objectives in GC5, to help to clarify the state of the art in the disciplines relevant to GC5, to identify some of the hardest problems, and to suggest promising lines of research and ways of assessing progress.

The main thrust of GC5 is to promote a combination of bottom-up, top-down and middle-out research into the nature of minds (human, animal and artificial) and the mechanisms in brains, and the ways in which brains can support the existence and functioning of minds. From this viewpoint minds are virtual machines running on brains, which are physical machines. The most important feature of minds is that, unlike most other machines which merely manipulate matter and energy, minds manipulate information -- which they acquire, store, analyse, transform, generate, communicate, interpret and use in many ways. The symposium will discuss problems and theories relating to how this is done, what the role of the body is in the process, what the major unsolved problems are and how we can identify promising short and medium term steps towards solving them.

Attendance at the symposium should help researchers dissatisfied with narrowly focused research who wish to meet and talk to others interested in more visionary research on brain and mind concerned with integrating functionality of different kinds, and different levels of description. A list of themes for talks and discussion at the symposium is here.

The symposium should usefully complement the AISB'06 symposium on Integrative approaches to Machine Consciousness on 5th-6th April.

Symposium programme

The symposium will include general discussions involving all the speakers and the audience on each day.

Programme

Invited Speakers

Jackie Chappell

How do animals gather useful information about their environment and act on it?

Mike Denham

The role of the neocortical laminar microcircuitry in perception, cognition, and consciousness (provisional)

Steve Furber

High-Performance Computing for Systems of Spiking Neurons

Jeffrey L. Krichmar

Brain-based devices for the study of nervous systems and the development of intelligent machines.

Mark Lee

Developmental Robotics: an emerging paradigm for intelligent agents.

Peter Redgrave

Is it just a question of priority? Inspiration from the vertebrate basal ganglia.

Murray Shanahan

Cognition and Consciousness: Is There a Fundamental Link?

Aaron Sloman

Requirements for a robot with human child-like or crow-like visual and learning capabilities.

Mark Steedman

Plans and the Structure of Mind and Language

Tom Ziemke

Integrating Cognition, Emotion and Autonomy: Embodied Cognition in Organisms and Robots

There will also be poster presentations.

Conference Plenary Speakers

• Monday 3rd April, 1800: Professor Mark Bedau, European Centre for Living Technology, Protolife SRL
• Tuesday 4th April, 17:00 Professor Maggie Boden, Centre for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Sussex
  • Life and Mind: A Union without Divorce?
• Wednesday 5th April, 17:00 Professor Nigel Franks, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol
  • From Individual to Collective Intelligence
• Thursday 6th April 9:30 Professor Owen Holland, Department of Computer Science, University of Essex
  • Artificial Consciousness and the Simulation of Behaviour

Organising Committee

Chair:

Murray Shanahan (Imperial College, London)

Other Members:

Mike Denham (Plymouth University)
Steve Furber (Manchester University)
Mark Lee (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
Aaron Sloman (University of Birmingham)
(Symposium organiser)

Poster Session Organiser: Nick Hawes (University of Birmingham)

Symposium Web Site

A decision will be taken at a later stage as to whether some other form of publication would also be suitable, e.g. a book.

THANKS

SSAISB
The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour

OTHER LINKS

Designing a Mind, AISB 2000

IJCAI'05 Tutorial on Representation and Learning in Robots and Animals

euCognition Inaugural Meeting, 16-17 Feb 2006

Future

Grand Challenges Conference GCC'06 22-24 March Glasgow

euCognition Six-Monthly Meeting Monday 3 July 2006.

Integrated Intelligent Capabilities Special Track at AAAI'06

Explaining Experience in Nature, IASE Symposium at STANFORD UNIVERSITY, March 2007.

INSTITUTE for ADVANCED SCIENCE & ENGINEERING, Explaining Experience in Nature. Palo Alto, California, USA