AISB 2003 Convention:
Cognition in Machines and Animals

Style file: AISB03.sty
Example TeX file: AISB03.tex
Example bibTeX file: AISB03.bib
A PDF example of the output: AISB03.pdf

Symposia timetables added

In addition to the convention timetable, most of the timetables for the individual symposia are now avavilable, along with the lists of accepted papers. These can be found in the programme section.

30 January 2003

Student bursaries available

There are 40 student bursaries available which may be awarded to any PhD student. The bursaries can be used to pay the early registration fee (£70), and up to £100 towards travel and accommodation costs.

See the registration section for more details.

14 January 2003

Keynote speakers have been announced

The keynote speakers at this year's AISB will be:

• Prof Sorin Solomon from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
• Prof A. N. Meltzoff and Prof R. Rao from the University of Washington.
• Prof Giulio Sandini from the University of Genova.
• Prof Peter Hobson from UCL
• Prof Yiannis Aloimonos from the University of Maryland.
• Prof Gregor Schöner from Ruhr-Universität

See the Keynote Speakers section.

7 January 2003

Selected papers to be published in AISBJ

The editor of the AISB Journal (AISBJ) has aggreed to publish a selection of the best papers from this year's AISB Convention.

02 December 2002

Registration is now open

See the registration section for details of how to register for AISB 2003.

Provisional programme

(See below for details of individual symposia.)

Key to symposia:

Imitation = Second International Symposium on Imitation in Animals and Artifacts

Agents = Adaptive Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

Methods = Scientific Methods for the Analysis of Agent-Environment Interaction

Vision = Biologically-Inspired Machine Vision, Theory and Application

Creativity = Artificial Intelligence and Creativity in Arts and Science

Blue underline = keynote speaker, linked to keynote speakers section

Each symposium has a programme chair(s), who administers their individual programme. A programme committee referees extended abstracts of papers for presentation at the event. See the Symposia details for information about the individual symposia.

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Details

Important dates

News

Programme

Convention theme

Symposia

Keynote speakers

Registration

Local info

Events

Links

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Symposia

Five symposia have been arranged:

1. Second International Symposium on Imitation in Animals and Artifacts
2. Adaptive Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS)
3. Scientific Methods for the Analysis of Agent-Environment Interaction
4. Biologically-Inspired Machine Vision, Theory and Application
5. Artificial Intelligence and Creativity in Arts and Science

Homepage: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/aisb03.html

Imitation has traditionally been regarded as easy, and often scornfully dismissed as trivial, "cheating", or unworthy in comparison to higher cognitive abilities. Yet this is an illusion. Explaining the imitative abilities of humans and other animals has proved to be a complex subject. Indeed, it is highly non-trivial even to say exactly what it means for two behaviours to be the "same". The mechanisms are not well-understood, and the connections to sociality, communication, development, and learning are deep, as recent research from various disciplines has started to reveal.

Building robots and software agents that can imitate or learn socially from other artificial or human agents in an appropriate way is an endeavour that involves the deepest problems of connecting perception, experience, context, and action. This four-day symposium will focus on state-of-the-art research into this important area that helps us to understand adaptive behaviour in social animals and machines.

The authors of the best contributions to the current symposium proceedings will be invited to submit to a special thematic journal issue (details to be announced).

The areas of interest of the symposium include but are not limited to:

• Trying to Imitate - Solving the Correspondence Problem between differently embodied systems
• Learning by Imitation - harnessing imitation as a means to bootstrap the acquisition of skills, knowledge, and appropriate behaviours
• The Social Functions of Immediate Imitation
• The Role of Imitation in the Development of Social Cognition Learning of Perception-Action Mappings via Observation of the Self or Others
• Imitation in Animals: studies and models, theories, comparisons to mechanisms of Social Learning
• Imitation in Play, Creativity, and Cultural Transmission
• Imitation and Communication
• Robot Imitation: experiments, architectures, role of memory and prediction, learning sequences of actions and acquiring behaviours
• Mechanisms of Imitation
• Applications in Interactive Systems
• Machine Learning Approaches to Perception and Action for Imitative Behaviour
• Neurobiological Foundations of Imitation
• Imitation and Intentionality
• Programming by Example/Programming by Demonstration
• Behavioural Cloning

Homepage: http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~kazakov/aamas/aamas-3.html

Adaptive Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) is an emerging multi-disciplinary area encompassing Computer Science, Software Engineering, Biology, as well as Cognitive and Social Sciences.

When designing agent systems, it is impossible to foresee all the potential situations an agent may encounter and specify the agents' behaviour optimally in advance. Agents therefore have to learn from and adapt to their environment. This task is even more complex when the agent is situated in an environment that contains other agents with potentially different capabilities and goals. Multi-Agent Learning, i.e., the ability of the agents to learn how to co-operate and compete, becomes crucial in such domains.

The goal of this symposium is to increase awareness and interest in adaptive agent research, encourage collaboration between ML experts and agent system experts, and give a representative overview of current research in the area of adaptive agents. The symposium will serve as an inclusive forum for the discussion on ongoing or completed work in both theoretical and practical issues.

Homepage: http://essexrobotics.essex.ac.uk/AISB/

Intelligent mobile robotics is increasingly advancing from an experimental engineering discipline towards a maturing research field, using standardised robotic platforms, experimental setups and procedures. However, reporting (of results and experimental procedures) is still largely dependent on qualitative descriptions. Furthermore (and partly due to this lack of quantitative descriptions), independent verification and validation of experimental results is not commonly seen in mobile robotics research. The same is true, more generally, for autonomous robots interacting with humans, for agent systems acting in partly unknown environments and for nonlinear dynamical systems models of behaviour.

Arguably, autonomous robotics and agent based approaches are now at a point where quantitative descriptions of behaviour and experimental results, independent validation and verification of results should become common practice. The symposium seeks to bring together scientists working in any area that analyses the behaviour of "behaving agents" in areas such as mobile robotics, autonomous agents, neural networks, neurosciene, experimental psychology and related sciences that share a common interest in describing behaviour quantitatively

Contributions are invited in the following areas:

• Autonomous (mobile) robotics in general, but especially the analysis of robot behaviour
• Biology, ethology and psychology, especially focusing on the analysis of behaving agents
• Mathematical and engineering methods for the analysis of dynamical systems.
• Dynamical systems theory, deterministic chaos, statistics, especially focusing on the analysis of physical systems
• Computer Science, especially modelling and analysis of behaving agents

Homepage: http://users.aber.ac.uk/ffl/BIMVTA03/

Computer vision has developed into a mature science over the last 40 years, but current computer vision systems are vastly different from, and in most cases lack the efficiency of, biological vision systems. Biological vision therefore remains a strong metaphor for the design of machines that simulate intelligent behaviour in visually sensed environments. Immensely rewarding applications in human-machine interaction await advances in the multi-disciplinary threads of machine vision, perception and cognition. To promote a strong multi-disciplinary interaction, the symposium aims to provide a forum for presentation and discussion of the state-of-the-art and opening directions of research and technology related to biologically-inspired machine vision. Papers are sought that advance the theoretical foundations or present applications on this topic. Presentations including, but not limited to the following, are encouraged from both industry and academia:

• Computational models of animal visual systems
• Representations needed for high-level vision
• Role of learning and applications of perception in vision systems
• Human-machine interaction
• Motion tracking and 3-D reconstruction
• Behaviour simulation and understanding
• Face and gesture recognition
• Recognition and interpretation
• Architectures and languages for image processing
• Real time image analysis, segmentation
• Performance comparisons, evaluations, or measures
• Software tools, associated resources and application (e.g. humanoid robot)

Contributions bringing together two or more of the above themes, to give a better understanding of a framework towards a more intelligent machine interpretation of images, are especially welcome.

Homepage: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~sgc/events/aisb03/

Submissions are invited for the AISB'03 Symposium on AI and Creativity in Arts and Science. Recently, creativity and creative behaviour have become serious targets for AI study. Worthwhile inroads into the computational study of the creative mind have been made, and systems exhibiting creative behaviour have been constructed. This was reflected in the successful AISB symposia on creative and creativity-related topics at AISB'99 (Edinburgh), AISB'00 (Birmingham), AISB'01 (York) and AISB'02 (Imperial). This symposium aims to bring together researchers interested in all forms of creative reasoning. The aim is to allow work focussed on different aspects of creative behaviour to be compared and contrasted. To this end, the programme committee invites the submission of extended abstracts covering creative behaviour in the arts and the sciences, including, but not restricted to:

• Computational support for creative people
• Computational models of creative processes
• The philosophy of computational creativity
• AI systems which can be argued to exhibit creativity
• The assessment of creativity in AI programs.

We are pleased to announce the following invited speakers for the keynote sessions at AISB this year:

Prof Sorin Solomon
Theoretical Physics Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
"Perception, Cognition and Creativity Emerging from Simple Microscopic Agents". [Talk abstract]

Prof A. N. Meltzoff and Prof R. Rao
University of Washington.
"Imitation learning in infants and robots: Towards probabilistic computational models". [Talk abstract] [Speaker bio]

Prof Giulio Sandini
LIRA-Lab, Department of Communication,Computer and System Sciences, University of Genova.
"Human Babies and Robot Cubs". [Talk abstract] [Speaker bio]

Prof Peter Hobson
UCL Department of Psychiatry & Behavioural Sciences.
"The interpersonal origins of thinking: How humans achieve what computers (so far) haven't". [Talk abstract] [Speaker bio]

Prof Yiannis Aloimonos
Computer Vision Laboratory Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, and Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland
"Visual space-time geometry: a geometry of thought". [Talk abstract] [Speaker bio]

Prof Gregor Schöner
Institut für Neuroinformatik, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
"Dynamic field theory and embodied cognition". [Talk abstract] [Speaker bio]

Registration is now open on the registration page.

Students and SSAISB members are eligible for a significant discount on registration fees. Delegates can join AISB when registering in order to qualify for the discount.

Accommodation and meals will be available on the University campus, very close to the convention (see accommodation details), and may also be booked on the registration form.

Please note that registration forms must be returned by post, electronic forms cannot be accepted.

Student bursaries

There are 40 student bursaries available which may be awarded to any PhD student. The bursaries can be used to pay the early registration fee (£70), and up to £100 towards travel and accommodation costs.

Students should apply for a bursary when they register by sending the following with their fully completed registration form:

• A letter (on headed note-paper) from your supervisor, confirming your student status.
• A brief letter detailing why you would particularly benefit from the AISB Convention, and from receiving a bursary.

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Details

Important dates

News

Programme

Convention theme

Symposia

Keynote speakers

Registration

Local info

Events

Links

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Travel and local information

The convention will be held at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Please note that Aberystwyth is located in mountainous country and so travel arrangements need to be planned in advance. For example, central London is about 5 hours away by road or rail. This means Heathrow and other London airports are less convenient for air travellers (6+ hours) than Birmingham airport which is well connected by rail (about 3 hours). Manchester airport is also an alternative (3 hours) with rail connections.

The travel details page has information about how to reach Aberystwyth, and maps of Aberystwyth and the region can be seen and downloaded from the University's web pages here. In addition, there is a pdf called "Getting to the University" available.

For delegates arriving by train, a special bus has been arranged which will go from the train station to the University. The following trains will be met (arrival times):

• Sunday 6th April: 19:07, 22:53.
• Monday 7th April: 13:19, 15:18, 17:20, 19:26, 21:38.

Accommodation has been pre-booked on the main University campus, and can be reserved during registration. These rooms are situated very close to the convention, and within easy walking distance of the reception venue. See accommodation details If you have any further queries about local arrangements, including travelling to Aberystwyth, please contact Meinir Thomas at the Conference Office: met@aber.ac.uk.

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Details

Important dates

News

Programme

Convention theme

Symposia

Keynote speakers

Registration

Local info

Events

Links

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Organised events

Two main events have been organised for conference attendees:

• Reception at the National Library of Wales - Tuesday 8th April - the convention reception will be held in the imposing National Library of Wales building, with its stunning views over the town of Aberystwyth and out to sea.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Rheidol Railway excursion - Wednesday 9th April - a trip has been organised on the scenic Vale of Rheidol Railway. The Rheidol steam train runs on narrow gauge tracks through beautiful Welsh countryside from Aberystwyth to Devils Bridge. On arrival at Devils Bridge people are welcome to visit the famous waterfalls, and a buffet meal will be provided. The total cost of this excursion is £30. Further information about this trip is available here

  
  
  
  

If you have any questions about registration, or local arrangements, such as accommodation or catering, please contact Meinir Thomas at the conference office: met@aber.ac.uk.

If you have general questions about the AISB'03 convention, please contact the local chair, Mark Lee: mhl@aber.ac.uk.

If you have any questions about the programme please contact Joanne Walker: jnw@aber.ac.uk.

The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB)
Aberystwyth University
Aberystwyth tourism site