COGRIC

I am very excited to be participating in the International Workshop on Cognitive Robotics, Intelligence and Control, 2006 in August this year. I will have to submit a one page summary of my research interests, which means I will have to be rather succinct.

It looks as though there are some excellent speakers going to be there. I have done a minimalistic amount of background research on them (i.e. done a Google search on their names) and here is a summary:

Bernard Baars

Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology, The Neurosciences Institute, San Diego, California

Interests: The psychology and brain basis of conscious experience; its ethical implications for human and animal welfare; consciousness in animals; consciousness in the history of psychology; the scientific problem of volition; psychodynamics; conscious aspects of emotion; bioethics.

Ahhh yes, consciousness. This sounds like a man I could enjoy long conversations with, given the opportunity.

Kerstin Dautenhahn

Professor of Artificial Intelligence, University of Hertfordshire, UK

Research goals include -investigation of social intelligence and individual interactions in groups of autonomous agents, including humans and other animals, software agents and robots- and research portfolio includes e-learning,

Social intelligence and interactions in groups of autonomous agents? Yep, that sounds like my sort of stuff. Although I am more interested in the effects on the individuals of the emergent behaviours the group exhibits, I think. However, also a strong interest in e-learning? Excellent news, as I not only have an interest there but am considering moving more in that direction for the next phase of my ongoing education.

Ferdinando Mussa-Ivaldi

Professor of Physiology Department of Physiology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, USA

Developmental learning used as a paradigm for development of robotic systems for rehabilitative work with stroke victims et al.

Who could fail to be engaged by this subject area? Not only can it have a direct beneficial effect on people suffering the after-effects of a debilitating ailment, but the underlying theories support, I believe, the core of the development of consciousness.

J. Kevin O'Regan

Directeur de Recherche I Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Institut de Psychologie, Centre Universitaire de Boulogne 71

Interests include such things as change blindness, which implies a certain degree of sparsity of information held in the brain

Now, I would have to agree with that. Not only does it make sense - why hold a complete model of what is going on in the big wide world when you can look at it to see what is there - but it also explains to some extent the phenomenon I often observe where people totally fail to notice things they don’t expect to see. They also totally fail to notice things if the attention is directed elsewhere - a trick useful to stage magicians and conmen alike. This, of course, has interesting repercussions in relation to computer systems. Why should they strive to perform image recognition, for example, using every pixel available in a camera shot, when we clearly don’t bother? And we benefit from a huge degree of parallel processing, which is something most run of the mill computers won’t be getting for some time yet.

Rolf Pfeiffer

Full professor of computer science Director, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Department of Informatics, Faculty of Mathematics and Science and Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology University of Zurich

Not so sure of what Prof. Pfeiffer does, but it looks like it is related to biologically inspired robotics and how the proprioceptors in the body might form part of the mind. Apologies if this isn’t one of your interests Prof., but if it is, I will be very happy to hear about it if I get the chance. It seems natural to me that the whole of the nervous system, and by extension, the system it monitors, make up the mind, even if it is centred in the brain. Of course, I might then be tempted to follow the line of reasoning that says our immediate environment is so tied up with our sensory perceptions, and is so readily manipulated by us, that it should be included in our concept of mind too. And that would have to extend, I might argue, to the other living entities around us.

Andy Schwartz

Professor of Neurobiology School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh

Neural processes supporting volitional movements. Relationship of cellular behaviour to limb movement.

Studies showing single cell prediction of arm movement. Impressive stuff, and quite possibly a step on the road to finding the elusive minimal substrate of consciousness, if such a thing exists. This is particularly interesting, in view of the timings involved, and it would be fascinating to find out more about what neuronal activity is required to support the populations of cells in the frontal cortex which have been studied in this work. Practically, it may well lead to systems to overcome paralysis or to drive prostheses, although I don’t like the sound of the work that has been done on monkeys, to be honest.

Olaf Sporns

Associate Professor of Psychology Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences Programs in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Indiana University

Looking at, amongst other things, mapping the connections in the brain. I was under the impression that the level of difference between individuals was quite large, which could make this a daunting project, but it would certainly be useful. The relationship between emergent behaviour and neural pathways appears to be a recurring theme here, and again I say, who could fail to be fascinated by this subject?

My main regret, at the moment, is that I will have to find some way of shoe-horning in some time to let me read through the papers that I can get my hands on published by this worthy group. I feel I would be letting the side down if I hadn’t got a reasonable grasp of their work before August. Shame about the small issue of it not gelling very well with the research I am doing at the moment. Obviously I will have to find creative ways of lengthening the day. That, or waste less of it, I suppose.