The FP6 EU-funded CoSy Robotic project organised a 3 day workshop at the University of Paris in September 2007, which aimed to bring together members of the CoSy Project team and some leading researchers in biology, neuroscience and psychology, in order to discuss topics of mutual interest concerning natural and artificial cognition. A few talks and posters were presented by members of the CoSy project, but most of the talks were presented by external invited speakers. Two members of the CoSy scientific advisory board were able to attend and introduced a discussion on the last day. Speakers had expertise ranging widely over intelligence in insects, primates, very young children and older human children. Copies of most of the the presentations, along with additional notes, discussion papers, and references to web sites of the speakers and related work. have been installed here:
Latest contributions to the web site (HTML+PDF etc.)
Presentation Slides, and other information.
A poster session was held in conjunction with a buffet dinner, to
enable the invited speakers to learn more about the work of the
project and meet the members of the CoSy team.
The purpose of the workshop is to bring together a group of established researchers in Human Psychology and Animal Behavior (see list below) so that they can exchange advice and inspiration with us: we are a small group of workers from seven very influential artificial intelligence and robotics laboratories brought together by a european initiative called CoSy - Cognitive Systems for cognitive assistants (see http://www.cognitivesystems.org/). The main goal of the CoSy project is to "advance the science of cognitive systems through a multi-disciplinary investigation of requirements, design options and trade-offs for human-like, autonomous, integrated, physical (eg., robot) systems, including requirements for architectures, for forms of representation, for perceptual mechanisms, for learning, planning, reasoning and motivation, for action and communication." Over the past two years we have been working on two robotic scenarios. The Explorer is concerned with finding its way around a complex building, showing others where to go and answering questions about routes and locations. The PlayMate is concerned with manipulation of structured objects on a table top. A problem in building these robots has been in deciding where to draw the nature/nurture boundary, between what is designed-in and what arises through learning and development. Another question is to decide upon which different representations are needed for the robot's different sub-capabilities. Another is the requirement for the robot to have multiple ontologies which are used as appropriate for different activities. We would be very interested in exchanging views on these or related topics with workers like you, who have expertise in biological systems. Many of the members of the consortium stem from a classical Artificial Intelligence background, and this has been the approach we have been using. Of particular interest to us are therefore examples from empirical studies showing how biological organisms have capacities or solve problems in ways that might not occur to an engineer!
This file is:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cosy/conferences/mofm-paris-07
Link to google map showing the location of the workshop,
nearby hotels, metro stations and bicycle stops.METRO, Bus and other travel information
Available via this interactive multi-language travel guide: http://www.ratp.com/
It can select routes for you.The metro map is here http://www8.ratp.info/touristes/index.php?langue=en&rub=reperer&cat=plan-metro (PDF)
A portion of the map combining Gare du Nord (near the top) and the University area (below) is here: Paris-metro.pdfRecommended restaurants.
Some restaurants on mapAbout renting "Velib" bicycles
Printable versions of maps of locations near hotels and the university (PDF).
Remote helper: Aaron Sloman
On behalf of The CoSy project