From harnad@cogsci.soton.ac.uk Sun Oct 29 00:08:18 1995 Received: from lucy.cs.wisc.edu by sea.cs.wisc.edu; Sun, 29 Oct 95 00:08:10 -0500; AA21316 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by lucy.cs.wisc.edu; Sun, 29 Oct 95 00:08:08 -0500 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by telnet-1.srv.cs.CMU.EDU id aa21589; 28 Oct 95 22:05:10 EDT Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU id aa21587; 28 Oct 95 21:50:39 EDT Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU id aa01152; 28 Oct 95 21:49:46 EDT Received: from RI.CMU.EDU by B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU id aa12015; 28 Oct 95 14:09:40 EDT Received: from beech.soton.ac.uk by RI.CMU.EDU id aa07007; 28 Oct 95 14:08:48 EDT Received: from cogsci.soton.ac.uk (neuro.psy.soton.ac.uk [152.78.226.32]) by beech.soton.ac.uk (8.6.12/hub-8.5a) with SMTP id SAA15083; Sat, 28 Oct 1995 18:06:03 GMT Received: from cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk by cogsci.soton.ac.uk (5.x/SMI-SVR4) id AA04540; Sat, 28 Oct 1995 19:00:04 +0100 From: Stevan Harnad Date: Sat, 28 Oct 95 18:06:05 GMT Message-Id: <8042.9510281806@cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk> To: cogneuro@ptolemy-ethernet.arc.nasa.gov, linguist@tamvm1.bitnet, John Moyne Subject: Language Innateness: BBS Call for Commentators Cc: PHILOS-L@liverpool.ac.uk, "Human Evolution\ Bboard" , Soc Phil Psych Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article on: INNATENESS, AUTONOMY, UNIVERSALITY? NEUROBIOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE by Ralph-Axel Mueller This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a current BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send email to: bbs@soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/bbs.html gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by anonymous ftp (or gopher or world-wide-web) according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ INNATENESS, AUTONOMY, UNIVERSALITY? NEUROBIOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE Ralph-Axel Mueller PET Center, Children's Hospital of Michigan, Wayne State University, Detroit MI 48201-2196, USA rmueller@pet.wayne.edu KEYWORDS: brain development, dissociations, distributive representations, epigenesis, evolution, functional localization, individual variation, innateness, language. ABSTRACT: The concepts of the innateness, universality, species-specificity, and autonomy of the human language capacity have had an extreme impact on the psycholinguistic debate for over thirty years. These concepts are evaluated from several neurobiological perspectives, with an emphasis on the emergence of language and its decay due to brain lesion and progressive brain disease. Evidence of perceptuomotor homologies and preadaptations for human language in nonhuman primates suggests a gradual emergence of language during hominid evolution. Regarding ontogeny, the innate component of language capacity is likely to be polygenic and shared with other developmental domains. Dissociations between verbal and nonverbal development are probably rooted in the perceptuomotor specializations of neural substrates rather than the autonomy of a grammar module. Aphasiological data often assumed to suggest modular linguistic subsystems can be accounted for in terms of a neurofunctional model incorporating perceptuomotor-based regional specializations and distributivity of representations. Thus, dissociations between grammatical functors and content words are due to different conditions of acquisition and resulting differences in neural representation. Since human brains are characterized by multifactorial interindividual variability, strict universality of functional organization is biologically unrealistic. A theoretical alternative is proposed according to which (a) linguistic specialization of brain areas is due to epigenetic and probabilistic maturational events, not to genetic 'hard-wiring', and (b) linguistic knowledge is neurally represented in distributed cell assemblies whose topography reflects the perceptuomotor modalities involved in the acquisition and use of a given item of knowledge. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from ftp.princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is bbs.mueller). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. ------------------------------------------------------------- These files are also on the World Wide Web and the easiest way to retrieve them is with Netscape, Mosaic, gopher, archie, veronica, etc. Here are some of the URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/bbs.html gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.mueller ftp://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.mueller To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp ftp.princeton.edu or ftp 128.112.128.1 When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin@yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.mueller When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit ---------- Where the above procedure is not available there are two fileservers: ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com and bitftp@pucc.bitnet that will do the transfer for you. To one or the other of them, send the following one line message: help for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or bitftp will then execute for you). ------------------------------------------------------------- From mdorigo@ulb.ac.be Mon Oct 30 11:50:30 1995 Received: from lucy.cs.wisc.edu by sea.cs.wisc.edu; Mon, 30 Oct 95 11:50:25 -0600; AA11445 Received: from bilby.cs.uwa.oz.au by lucy.cs.wisc.edu; Mon, 30 Oct 95 11:50:20 -0600 Received: from (mafm@parma.cs.uwa.oz.au [130.95.1.7]) by cs.uwa.oz.au (8.6.8/8.5) with SMTP id UAA06946; Mon, 30 Oct 1995 20:23:44 +0800 Message-Id: <199510301223.UAA06946@cs.uwa.oz.au> From: mdorigo@ulb.ac.be (Marco DORIGO) To: reinforce@cs.uwa.edu.au Subject: Call for Papers: ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR Journal Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 16:00:26 +0100 CALL FOR PAPERS (http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/dorigo/ABSI/CFP.html) ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR Journal Special Issue on COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE Guest editors: Jean-Louis Deneubourg, Marco Dorigo Submission Deadline: June 1, 1996. Adaptive Behavior is an international journal published by MIT Press; Editor-in-Chief: Jean-Arcady Meyer, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. For this special issue we invite unpublished papers on theoretical or applied research on collective intelligence. Collective intelligence is a property which can be shown by collections of agents which communicate directly or indirectly (by changing some common environment) with each other and which collectively solve problems. Collective intelligence is also sometimes referred to as swarm intelligence. Collective intelligence is a property that can be found in both natural and artificial systems. Authors are therefore encouraged to emphasize the relevance of their research to both natural and artificial systems. Relevant topics for this special issue include (suggestions for further topics are welcome): * Collective robotics, cellular robotic systems, etc. * Distributed problem solving in social insect colonies * Artificial ecologies * Applications to optimization problems Authors intending to submit a manuscript MUST contact the guest editors as soon as possible, and in any case not later than February 15, 1996, to discuss paper ideas and suitability for this issue. Use mdorigo@ulb.ac.be or tel: +32-2-650-3169 or fax: +32-2-650-2715. Submitted papers should be delivered by June 1, 1996. Manuscripts should be typed or laser-printed in English (with American spelling preferred) and double-spaced. Both paper and electronic submission are possible, as described below. Copies of the complete Adaptive Behavior Instructions to Contributors are available on request--also see the Adaptive Behavior journal's home page at http://www.ens.fr:80/bioinfo/www/francais/AB.html For paper submissions, send five (5) copies of submitted papers (hard-copy only) to: Marco Dorigo IRIDIA - CP 194/6 Universite' Libre de Bruxelles Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium For electronic submissions, use Postscript format, ftp the file to iridia.ulb.ac.be/incoming/AB, and send an email notification to mdorigo@ulb.ac.be Ftp detailed instructions: compress your-paper (both Unix compress and gzip commands are ok) ftp iridia.ulb.ac.be (164.15.11.65) give anonymous as your login name give your e-mail address as password set transmission to binary (just type the command BINARY) cd to /incoming/AB put your-paper send me an email to let me know you transferred the paper Marco Dorigo, Ph.D. IRIDIA Universite' Libre de Bruxelles Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50 CP 194/6 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium tel. +32-2-6503169 fax +32-2-6502715 mdorigo@ulb.ac.be http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/dorigo/dorigo.html From marks@neuro.usc.edu Mon Oct 30 19:02:05 1995 Received: from lucy.cs.wisc.edu by sea.cs.wisc.edu; Mon, 30 Oct 95 19:02:02 -0600; AA18562 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by lucy.cs.wisc.edu; Mon, 30 Oct 95 19:01:59 -0600 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by telnet-1.srv.cs.CMU.EDU id aa23870; 30 Oct 95 17:24:04 EST Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU id aa23825; 30 Oct 95 16:50:41 EST Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU id aa03131; 30 Oct 95 16:50:24 EST Received: from EDRC.CMU.EDU by B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU id ab25563; 30 Oct 95 14:05:06 EST Received: from usc.edu by EDRC.CMU.EDU id aa27526; 30 Oct 95 14:04:33 EST Received: from neuro.usc.edu by usc.edu (8.6.12/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id LAA20053; Mon, 30 Oct 1995 11:04:30 -0800 Received: from [128.125.37.13] (cheshire.usc.edu [128.125.37.13]) by neuro.usc.edu (8.7.1/8.6.7+ucs) with SMTP id LAA07514 for ; Mon, 30 Oct 1995 11:04:28 -0800 (PST) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 11:04:28 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199510301904.LAA07514@neuro.usc.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: Connectionists@cs.cmu.edu From: Mark Seidenberg Subject: job opening at USC The psychology department at USC is searching for a person in the "cognitive and behavioral neuroscience" area, with a preference for someone who does neural network modeling. The position could also include appointments in computer science or neurobiology as appropriate. The person would join a strong neuroscience-cognitive science program here at USC, which includes Michael Arbib, Christoph von der Malsburg (part-time), myself, Irv Biederman, Richard F. Thompson, Michel Beaudry, Larry Swanson, Ted Berger, and others. Text of the ad follows. I would be willing to answer inquiries from interested parties. ----- COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE: The Psychology Department at the University of Southern California invites applications for a faculty position at the tenure-track assistant professor level, including but not limited to individuals with expertise in neural network modeling. We are particularly interested in applicants skilled in quantitative methods or computational modeling techniques. Teaching responsibilities would include courses in these areas. Interested candidates should submit a letter outlining their qualifications, curriculum vitae, recent publications and three letters of recommendation to: Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Search Committee, Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA 90089-1061. Deadline for applications is January 1, 1996. We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and strongly encourage applications from minorities and women. --- ____________________________________ Mark S. Seidenberg Neuroscience Program University of Southern California 3614 Watt Way Los Angeles, CA 90089-2520 Phone: 213-740-9174 Fax: 213-740-5687 ____________________________________ From tds@ai.mit.edu Mon Oct 30 19:02:06 1995 Received: from lucy.cs.wisc.edu by sea.cs.wisc.edu; Mon, 30 Oct 95 19:02:04 -0600; AA18564 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by lucy.cs.wisc.edu; Mon, 30 Oct 95 19:02:01 -0600 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by telnet-1.srv.cs.CMU.EDU id ab23870; 30 Oct 95 17:25:06 EST Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU id aa23827; 30 Oct 95 16:52:18 EST Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU id aa03139; 30 Oct 95 16:52:08 EST Received: from EDRC.CMU.EDU by B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU id aa27805; 30 Oct 95 16:03:21 EST Received: from life.ai.mit.edu by EDRC.CMU.EDU id aa28062; 30 Oct 95 16:02:58 EST Received: from dentate.ai.mit.edu (DENTATE.MIT.EDU) by life.ai.mit.edu (4.1/AI-4.10) for connectionists@cs.cmu.edu id AA11220; Mon, 30 Oct 95 16:02:54 EST From: "Terence D. Sanger" Received: by dentate.ai.mit.edu (4.1/AI-4.10) id AA08537; Mon, 30 Oct 95 16:02:53 EST Date: Mon, 30 Oct 95 16:02:53 EST Message-Id: <9510302102.AA08537@dentate.ai.mit.edu> To: connectionists@cs.cmu.edu Subject: NIPS workshop opening Dear Connectionists, There has been an unexpected opening in the panelists for the NIPS workshop described below. If you would be interested in presenting some of your work and aiding a rousing discussion, please send me a brief abstract and description of your current research. I am most interested in speakers with background or current research in "wet-science" neurophysiology. Sorry for the late notice! Terry Sanger tds@ai.mit.edu ============================================================================= NIPS*95 Post-Conference Workshop "Vertebrate Neurophysiology and Neural Networks: Can the teacher learn from the student?" Results from neurophysiological investigations continue to guide the development of artificial neural network models that have been shown to have wide applicability in solving difficult computational problems. This workshop addresses the question of whether artificial neural network models can be applied to understanding neurophysiological results and guiding further experimental investigations. Recent work on close modelling of vertebrate neurophysiology will be presented, so as to give a survey of some of the results in this field. We will concentrate on examples for which artificial neural network models have been constructed to mimic the structure as well as the function of their biological counterparts. Clearly, this can be done at many different levels of abstraction. The goal is to discuss models that have explanatory and predictive power for neurophysiology. The following questions will serve as general discussion topics: 1. Do artificial neural network models have any relationship to ``real'' Neurophysiology? 2. Have any such models been used to guide new biological research? 3. Is Neurophysiology really useful for designing artificial networks, or does it just provide a vague ``inspiration''? 4. How faithfully do models need to address ultrastructural or membrane properties of neurons and neural circuits in order to generate realistic predictions of function? 5. Are there any artificial network models that have applicability across different regions of the central nervous system devoted to varied sensory and motor modalities? 6. To what extent do theoretical models address more than one of David Marr's levels of algorithmic abstraction (general approach, specific algorithm, and hardware implementation)? The workshop is planned as a single day panel discussion including both morning and afternoon sessions. Two or three speakers per session will be asked to limit presentations of relevant research to 15 minutes. Each speaker will describe computational models of different vertebrate regions, and speakers are encouraged to present an overview of algorithms and results in a manner that will allow direct comparison between methods. Intense audience participation is actively encouraged. The intended audience includes researchers actively involved in neurophysiological modelling, as well as a general audience that can contribute viewpoints from different backgrounds within the Neural Networks field. From N.Sharkey@dcs.shef.ac.uk Mon Oct 30 21:22:26 1995 Received: from lucy.cs.wisc.edu by sea.cs.wisc.edu; Mon, 30 Oct 95 21:22:23 -0600; AA20312 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by lucy.cs.wisc.edu; Mon, 30 Oct 95 21:22:21 -0600 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by telnet-1.srv.cs.CMU.EDU id aa23823; 30 Oct 95 17:15:17 EST Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU id aa23819; 30 Oct 95 16:49:51 EST Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU id aa03123; 30 Oct 95 16:49:35 EST Received: from CS.CMU.EDU by B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU id aa19528; 30 Oct 95 9:28:58 EST Received: from gw.dcs.shef.ac.uk by CS.CMU.EDU id aa12222; 30 Oct 95 9:28:21 EST Received: from entropy.dcs.shef.ac.uk by dcs.shef.ac.uk (4.1/DAVE-1.0) id AA22872; Mon, 30 Oct 95 14:28:02 GMT Received: by entropy.dcs.shef.ac.uk (920330.SGI/SMI-4.1) id AA08491; Mon, 30 Oct 95 14:28:16 GMT Date: Mon, 30 Oct 95 14:28:16 GMT From: N.Sharkey@dcs.shef.ac.uk Message-Id: <9510301428.AA08491@entropy.dcs.shef.ac.uk> To: connectionists@cs.cmu.edu, connect-bb@ed.eusip Subject: one day seminar/colloquim ************************ SELF-LEARNING ROBOTS ************************ Organisers: Noel Sharkey John Hallam Computer Science AI Dept. Sheffield U. Edinburgh U. An Institution of Electrical Engineers One-day Seminar Savoy Place, London, UK: February, 12th, 1996. This will be a one day seminar to examine the most recent developments in Robot learning. There will a number of international invited speakers and there will also be opportunities for group (and personal) discussion at the event. INVITED SPEAKERS (alphabetical) Evolutionary Learning in Robots Dave Cliff (U.K.) Shaping robots: An experiment in Behavior Engineering Marco Dorigo (Italy) Learning subsumptions for an autonomous robot. Jan Heemskerk & Noel Sharkey (U.K.) Self-Organization in Robot Control Ulrich Nehmzow (U.K.) Toward Conscious Robots Martin Nilsson (Sweden) Evolving non-trivial behaviors on an autonomous robot. Stefano Nolfi (Italy) Robot spatial learning: insights from animal and human behaviour\\ Tony Prescott (UK) Learning more from less data: Experiments with lifelong robot learning. Sebastian Thrun (Germany) Neural Reinforcement Learning for Behavior Synthesis. Claude Touzet (France) A robot arm is neurally controlled using monocular feedback Patrick van der Smagt (The Netherlands) Exploration in Reinforcement Learning Jeremy Wyatt, Gillian Hayes, and John Hallam (U.K.) Robust and Adaptive World Modelling for Mobile Robots Uwe Zimmer (Germany) REGISTRATION INFORMATION: Sarah Evans (at above address) or email: sevans@iee.org.uk Dont reply to this message for info. please - use above email only. From listerrj@helios.aston.ac.uk Mon Oct 30 21:22:28 1995 Received: from lucy.cs.wisc.edu by sea.cs.wisc.edu; Mon, 30 Oct 95 21:22:26 -0600; AA20318 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by lucy.cs.wisc.edu; Mon, 30 Oct 95 21:22:23 -0600 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by telnet-1.srv.cs.CMU.EDU id ac23870; 30 Oct 95 17:26:33 EST Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU id aa23829; 30 Oct 95 16:53:21 EST Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU id aa03144; 30 Oct 95 16:52:34 EST Received: from EDRC.CMU.EDU by B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU id aa19358; 30 Oct 95 9:20:11 EST Received: from hermes.aston.ac.uk by EDRC.CMU.EDU id aa26142; 30 Oct 95 9:18:50 EST Received: from sun.aston.ac.uk (actually host dendrite.aston.ac.uk) by hermes.aston.ac.uk with SMTP (PP); Mon, 30 Oct 1995 14:22:58 +0000 Message-Id: <5409.9510301419@sun.aston.ac.uk> To: Connectionists@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Research Programmer Reply-To: listerrj@aston.ac.uk X-Mailer: Mew beta version 0.98 on Emacs 19.29.2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 14:19:56 +0000 From: Richard Lister Content-Length: 3501 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Neural Computing Research Group ------------------------------- Dept of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Aston University, Birmingham, UK Research Programmer ------------------- * Full details at http://neural-server.aston.ac.uk/ * Applications are invited for the post of Research Programmer within the Neural Computing Research Group (NCRG) at Aston University. The NCRG is now the largest academic research group in this area in the UK, and has an extensive and lively programme of research ranging from the theoretical foundations of neural computing and pattern recognition through to industrial and commercial applications. The Group is based in spacious accommodation in the University's Main Building, and is well equipped with its own network of Silicon Graphics and Sun workstations, supported by a full-time system administrator. The successful candidate will work under the supervision of Professor Chris Bishop and Professor David Lowe and will be responsible for a range of software development and related activities. An early task will involve the development of a large C++ library of neural network software for use in many of the Group's projects. Another significant component will involve contributions to industrial and commercial research contracts, as well as providing software support to existing research projects. Additional responsibilities may include development of software for use in taught courses as part of the Group's MSc programme in Pattern Analysis and Neural Networks. The ideal candidate will have: * a good first degree in a numerate discipline * expertise in software development (preferably in C and C++) * a good understanding of neural networks * working knowledge of basic mathematics such as calculus and linear algebra * experience of working in a UNIX environment Neural Computing Research Group ------------------------------- The Neural Computing Research Group currently comprises the following academic staff Chris Bishop Professor David Lowe Professor David Bounds Professor Geoffrey Hinton Visiting Professor Richard Rohwer Lecturer Alan Harget Lecturer Ian Nabney Lecturer David Saad Lecturer Chris Williams Lecturer together with the following Postdoctoral Research Fellows David Barber Paul Goldberg Alan McLachlan Herbert Wiklicky Huaihu Zhu a full-time system administrator, and PhD and MSc research students. Conditions of Service --------------------- The appointment will be for an initial period of one year, with the possibility of subsequent renewal. Initial salary will be on the academic 1A or 1B scales up to 15,986. How to Apply ------------ If you wish to be considered for this position, please send a full CV, together with the names and addresses of at least 3 referees, to: Hanni Sondermann Neural Computing Research Group Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Aston University Birmingham B4 7ET, U.K. Tel: (+44 or 0) 121 333 4631 Fax: (+44 or 0) 121 333 6215 e-mail: h.e.sondermann@aston.ac.uk Closing date: 20 November 1995. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From maja@cs.brandeis.edu Tue Oct 31 18:20:49 1995 Received: from lucy.cs.wisc.edu by sea.cs.wisc.edu; Tue, 31 Oct 95 18:20:47 -0600; AA06022 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by lucy.cs.wisc.edu; Tue, 31 Oct 95 18:20:45 -0600 Received: from TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU by telnet-1.srv.cs.CMU.EDU id aa24075; 30 Oct 95 19:56:20 EST Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by TELNET-1.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU id aa24073; 30 Oct 95 19:48:54 EST Received: from DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU by DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU id aa03268; 30 Oct 95 19:48:44 EST Received: from CS.CMU.EDU by B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU id ab01895; 30 Oct 95 19:45:27 EST Received: from garnet.cs.brandeis.edu by CS.CMU.EDU id aa18573; 30 Oct 95 19:40:43 EST Received: (from maja@localhost) by garnet.cs.brandeis.edu (8.6.11/8.6.9) id TAA10752; Mon, 30 Oct 1995 19:40:07 -0500 Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 19:40:07 -0500 Message-Id: <199510310040.TAA10752@garnet.cs.brandeis.edu> From: Maja Mataric To: connectionists@cs.cmu.edu Subject: NIPS*95 Post-Conference Workshop on Robot Learning ---------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: Robot Learning III -- Learning in the "Real World" A NIPS*95 Post-conference Workshop Vail, Colorado, Dec 1, 1995 ---------------------------------------------------------------- The goal of this one-day workshop is to provide a forum for researchers active in the area of robot learning. Due to the limited time available, we will focus on one major issue: the difficulty of going from theory and simulation to practice and actual implementation of robot learning. A wide variety of algorithms have been developed for learning in robots and, in simulation, many of them work quite well. However, physical robots are faced with sensor noise, control error, non-stationary environments, inconsistent feedback, and the need to operate robustly in real time. Most of these aspects are difficult to simulate accurately, yet have a critical effect on the learning performance. Unfortunately, very few of the developed learning algorithms have been empirically tested on actual robots, and of those even fewer have repeated the success found in simulated domains. Some of the specific questions we plan to discuss are: How can we handle noise in sensing and action without a priori models? How do we build in a priori knowledge? How can we learn in real time with exploration in real time? How can we construct richer reward functions, incorporating feedback, shaping, multi-model reinforcement, etc? This workshop is intended to serve as a followup to previous years' post-NIPS workshops on robot learning. The morning session of the workshop will consist of short presentations of problems faced when implementing learning in physical robots, followed by a general discussion guided by a moderator. The afternoon session will concentrate on actual implementations, with video (and hopefully live) demonstrations where possible. As time permits, we will also attempt to create an updated "Where do we go from here?" list, following the example of the previous years' workshops. The list will attempt to characterize the problems that must be solved next in order to make progress in applied robot learning. Talks by: Stefan Schaal, Georgia Tech, ATR "How Hard Is It To Balance a Real Pole With a Real Arm?" Sebastian Thrun, Carnegie Mellon University, "Learning More from Less Data: Experiments in Lifelong Robot Learning" Maja Mataric, Brandeis University "Complete Systems Learning in Dynamic Environments" Marcos Salganicoff, University of Delaware, A.I. Dupont Institute "Robots are from Mars, Learning Algorithms are from Venus: A practical guide to getting what you want in a relationship with your robot learning implementation" The targeted audience for the workshop are those researchers who are interested in robot learning and robots in general. We expect to draw an eclectic audience, so every attempt will be made to ensure that presentations are accessible to people without any specific background in the field. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Organized by: Maja Mataric, Brandeis University maja@cs.brandeis.edu David Cohn, MIT and Harlequin, Inc. cohn@harlequin.com