- Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems -

DATES: July 22-24, 2005
LOCATION:Nara-Ken New Public Hall
101 Kasugano-cho, Nara, Japan

This workshop focuses on combining developmental psychology, neuroscience, biology, and robotics with the goal of understanding the functioning of biological systems.
Epigenetic systems, either natural or artificial, share a prolonged developmental process through which varied and complex cognitive and perceptual structures emerge as a result of the interaction of an embodied system with a physical and social environment. Epigenetic robotics includes the two-fold goal of understanding biological systems by the interdisciplinary integration between neural and engineering sciences and, simultaneously, that of enabling robots and artificial systems to develop skills for any particular environment instead of programming them for specific environments.
To this aim, psychological theory and empirical evidence should be used to inform epigenetic robotic models, and these models should be used as theoretical tools to make experimental predictions in developmental psychology. We encourage the submission from different disciplines such as robotics, artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, biology or neurophysiology, as well as interdisciplinary work bridging the gap between science and engineering.

Sponsor
  NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology), Japan
   
Related Events
  This workshop will be held right after the series of the Ninth RoboCup International Competitions and Conferences, RoboCup-05 (July 13-19, 2005; Osaka, Japan) and the Fourth International Conference on Development and Learning, ICDL-05 (July 19-21, 2005; Osaka, Japan). From their sites (Osaka) to EpiRob's site (Nara), it will take 1.5 hours by train.
   
Contact
  Please send any questions to the workshop chair:
  Hideki Kozima (xkozima@nict.go.jp)
Fax: +81-6-6376-2362
  2005 EpiRob Secretariat
  Fax: +81-6-6376-2362
E-mail:nictsecretariat@intergroup.co.jp