IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2006)

Workshop
Toward Cognitive Humanoid Robots

Monday, 4 December 2006, Genoa, Italy

In this workshop we continue the series of workshops we organized at past Humanoids conferences, in 2004 (Building Humanoid Heads), and 2005 (Cognitive Architectures for Humanoids). In 2006 we focus on the recent methodologies towards the realization of "humanoid cognition".

Recently, roboticists and artificial intelligence researchers have been looking more closely at other disciplines in developing their systems. The main driving force is that other disciplines can offer a guiding hand in the realization of sophisticated humanoid robotic systems. Experimental paradigms from developmental psychology, neuroscience and physiology are now being better utilized. A paradigm shift toward this new scientific endeavor in the engineering of sophisticated human-like systems has been forged.

More specifically, among the key issues that can contribute to the improvement of cognitive proficiency of humanoid robots is the ability to seamlessly acquire new knowledge through learning. However, new knowledge cannot be acquired without a strong perceptual-action component that provides information about the state of the world and its changes. In order to improve the still rather primitive cognitive abilities of humanoid robots, researchers should gain better understanding of what information is needed for learning, what can be provided by humanoid sensing, especially vision, which is arguably the most important sense for humanoid robots, and how a complete cognitive system should be designed and realized. Studies of human vision and learning processes have a long tradition and can provide a good starting point towards the realization of Cognitive Humanoid Robots.

This one-day workshop will provide a forum for researchers working in these various areas pertaining to humanoid cognition, to interact and exchange ideas.

• Cognitive architectures;
• Multi-disciplinary approaches towards humanoid cognition;
• The role of humanoid robots in realizing human-like cognition;
• Neuroscience and humanoid robots;
• Developmental approach to humanoid robotics;
• Human-like learning systems for humanoid robots;
• Imitation Architectures;
• Computational models of biological vision processes;
• Technical implementations of humanoid vision systems;
• Perception of human motion;
• Object and action recognition on humanoid robots;
• Cognitive processes in vision;

Walking and Vision Integration to Increase Humanoid Robot Autonomy
O. Stasse, Joint Japanese-French Laboratory (JRL), Intelligent System Research Institute
AIST/ISRI - CNRS/STIC

Sensorimotor primitives for building object representations
A. Ude, Institut "Jožef Stefan", Ljubljana, Slovenija & ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan

Combining Imitation Learning with other Motor Control and Learning Abilities
Aude Billard, Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory, Lausanne, Switzerland

Robot Dreams: Conjectures on Creative Problem Solving
Richard Alan Peters II, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Vanderbilt University School of Engineering

Humanoid Robotics Perspectives to Neuroscience.
Gordon Cheng, ATR International, Kyoto, Japan/JST-ICORP, Saitama, Japan

Towards Conscious Humanoid Robots
Jiri Wiedermann
Institute of Computer Science, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

Computational Model of Mind for a Robot and Its Application to Spatial Language Understanding in Virtual Environment
K. S. Jayakumar and Ming Xie
Anna University, India and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

End of workshop

Participants of this Workshop are required to submit their abstract (300 words) or full paper in .pdf-format. The maximum number of pages is limited to six, including figures. The full paper should be accordant to the paper submission requirements, please refer to http://humanoids06.epfl.ch/. Please send your paper directly to the Workshop organizers (asfour@ira.uka.de).

Important dates for the Workshop:

• Sending the abstract or sending of full paper to the Workshop organizers: AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!
• Notification of acceptance: October 15, 2006
• Deadline for submission of final manuscripts: November 15, 2006

Department of Humanoid Robotics and Computational Neuroscience, Computational Neuroscience Laboratories,
ATR International
and
JST-ICORP Computational Brain Project
Japan Science and Technology Agency,
Kyoto, Japan