<1> Intelligence Dynamics

Abstract:
The aim of this workshop is to discuss a new field of studies on
intelligence where embodiment and dynamics are addressed. Let us call
this research field "Intelligence Dynamics", which consists of
interdisciplinary researches of Brain Science, Robotics, Cognitive
Science, and so on. In this workshop at Humanoids2005, we will focus
on exchanging ideas of researchers in this field using humanoid
robots. The speakers would be selected from universities, national
institutes, as well as private companies. This workshop is designed
to benefit the following people in various fields: researchers
interested in developing open-ended robot systems, scientists
interested in constructive approach to understand brain, cognition,
and psychology, and engineers interested in developing interactive
embodied intelligence.

Description:
Recently personal robot development including humanoid type has become
popular in the world. The most of them are still in laboratory
prototypes, but some are now commercially available. Users tend to
expect high performance of personal robots, especially for
interactions or intelligence in general, however, traditional
approaches toward intelligence seem to be difficult to meet the users'
expectations. It seems to be difficult for the manually designed
behaviors of personal robot to keep interaction for a long-term as a
life-long partner.

On the other hand, the embodiment of intelligence is getting more
attention from many research fields such as robotics, brain science,
cognitive science, and so on. Similarly the dynamical systems approach
from sensory-motor signals in stead of manipulating symbols and logic
formula is also getting attention as a new approach toward
understanding cognition. Thus, it becomes important for researchers of
intelligence to study embodied interactions with external environment
including humans, and to study dynamics of the interactions from
sensory-motor signals in order for emergence of some quasi-symbols.

We propose to call this interdisciplinary research Intelligence
Dynamics, and accelerate this research to achieve the intelligent
autonomous agent that can be a life-long partner. The main purpose of
this workshop at Humanoids 2005 is to address the possibilities of
Intelligence Dynamics and exchange ideas among researchers interested
in this field. The objectives of this workshop are

・To Discuss and compare each approach with others, and consider
　what is the essential computational model of Intelligence Dynamics as
　open-ended systems.
・To Discuss how to implement the essential functions and
　compare some implementations

The technical topics of the presentations will be related to the
following issues.

・Imitation learning and mirror systems
・Reinforcement learning and embodied interaction
・dynamical systems approach
・emergence of quasi-symbols
・neural networks
・human brain modeling and its artificial implementations
・function approximation algorithms
・designing robotic body for embodied intelligence
・developmental psychology for learning
・developing open-ended systems

Contact:
Masahiro Fujita,
Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratories Inc.
Email id_ws@idl.sony.co.jp
Phone: +81-3-5448-5901, Fax::+81-3-5448-6830

Program:

<2> Cognitive Architectures for Humanoids

Objectives:
Research on cognitive architectures is a very important issue because
it specifies the underlying infrastructure for an intelligent
system. Cognitive humanoid robots should be able to interpret data
arising from real-world events and processes, acquire situated
knowledge of their environment, act, and make or suggest decisions and
communicate with people on human terms. A cognitive architecture for
humanoid robots has to fulfil a wide range of requirements from
disciplines such as learning theory, control theory, theoretical and
computational neuroscience, artificial intelligence,
human-machine-interaction, perception-action modelling, planning and
decision making, mechatronics and even biomechanics.

The workshop is a forum to foster discussion among researchers about
cognition and cognitive architectures for humanoid robots which safely
coexist with humans, interactively communicate with humans and
usefully manipulate objects in built-for-human environments. The
workshop will focus on the fundamental questions including:

Definition of cognition for Humanoids
Requirements for cognitive architectures and tools
Learning, memorization and decision making
Perception and action representation
Understanding and modelling of human cognition
How to create the conditions for testing existing frameworks
from information theory, neuro- and social sciences and using
them to design robots with advanced cognitive capabilities.

Areas for discussion include cognitive architectures, control systems,
social interaction, as well as key engineering issues concerning the
implementation of cognitively plausible theories on humanoids.

Organizers:
Tamim Asfour, Gordon Cheng and Rudiger Dillmann
University of Karlsruhe
Institute for Computer Science and Engineering
GERMANY Department of Humanoid Robotics and Computational Neuroscience
Computational Neuroscience Laboratories,
ATR International, Japan

Contact:
Tamim Asfour
University of Karlsruhe
Haid-und-Neu-Str. 7
76131 Karlsruhe
Germany
Phone: +49 (0)721 608 7379
Fax: +49 (0)721 608 8270
Email: asfour@ira.uka.de

If you have any questions, please send email to asfour@ira.uka.de

Program:
Program URL: http://i61www.ira.uka.de/users/asfour/Humanoids2005.htm

<3> Views of The Uncanny Valley

CALL FOR SPEAKERS:
If you would like to participate in the workshop as a speaker or on a
discussion panel please send an expression of interest that outlines
your proposed contribution. Please send this as soon as possible to
Frank Pollick (frank@psy.gla.ac.uk), Karl MacDorman (kfm@ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp) and
Christian Keysers (c.keysers@med.rug.nl) by September 1 at the latest.

THEME AND GOALS:
The term "bukimi no tani" or "uncanny valley" was coined 35 years ago
by Dr. Masahiro Mori, and it stands today as one of the most commonly
known design considerations of humanoid robots and synthetic
characters. In this workshop we bring together researchers in
robotics, visual perception, and neuroscience to discuss the uncanny
valley from these different perspectives. The goal will be to examine
how the perception of human and robot motions are transformed into an
appreciation of the events being observed. In addition, we will try to
direct discussion towards potential theoretical bases of
human-humanoid interaction and to obtaining a method for accurate
navigation around the uncanny valley.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:
Christian Keysers: In the last ten years, it has become
evident that when humans observe the actions and sensations of others,
these are transformed in the brain of the observer into the observer's
own actions and sensations through a series of mechanisms called
'shared circuits' or mirror circuits. We will review this literature,
suggesting an essential mechanism for understanding others. In
particular, we will show that the perception of robots performing
actions appears to be processed in much the same way as the perception
of other humans. These results from neuroscience suggest that
human-robot interactions may be inherently social, being performed by
what has been called our social brain.

Karl MacDorman: Robots that lie in the uncanny valley may act as
a subconscious reminder of death. We explore this hypothesis by
reproducing seminal experiments from terror management theory,
substituting an uncanny robot for the reminder of death in the control
group.

Frank Pollick: The existence of the uncanny valley presupposes
several basic properties of visual cognition. For example that form
and motion can contribute independently to the perception of an action
and that small deviations in the physical properties of an action can
dramatically influence how it is experienced. We will first review
these properties and then discuss how they delineate the scope of the
uncanny valley

Program:

13:00 - 13:25 Frank E. Pollick
13::25 - 13:50 Christopher H. Ramey
13:50 - 14:15 David Hanson
14:15 - 14:40 Hiroshi Ishiguro
14:40 - 15:00 coffee break
15:00 - 15:25 Karl F. MacDorman
15:25 - 15:50 Luc Berthouze
15:50 - 16:15 Thierry Chaminade and Jessica K. Hodgins
16:15 - 16:40 Christian Keysers
16:40 - 17:00 Discussion

A web page for the workshop can be found at:
http://www.theuncannyvalley.org/