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CALL FOR PAPERS
Second International Symposium on Imitation in Animals and Artifacts
7 - 11 April 2003, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom, as
part of the Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour Convention
AISB'03 with the general theme of "Cognition in Machines and Animals"
Programme Chairs:
Kerstin Dautenhahn and Chrystopher L. Nehaniv
Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire
Scope of the Symposium:
Imitation has traditionally been regarded as easy, and often scornfully
dismissed as trivial, "cheating", or unworthy in comparison to higher
cognitive abilities. Yet this is an illusion. Explaining the imitative
abilities of humans and other animals has proved to be a complex subject.
Indeed, it is highly non-trivial even to say exactly what it means for two
behaviours to be the "same". The mechanisms of imitation and social
learning are not well-understood, and the connections to sociality,
communication, development, and learning are deep, as recent research from
various disciplines has started to reveal.
Building robots and software agents that can imitate or learn socially from
other artificial or human agents in an appropriate way is an endeavour that
involves the deepest problems of connecting perception, experience,
context, and action. This symposium will focus on state-of-the-art research
into this important area that helps us to understand adaptive behaviour in
social animals and machines.
The first symposium "Imitation in Animals and Artifacts" was organized by
Kerstin Dautenhahn and Chrystopher Nehaniv as part of the AISB'99
Convention Edinburgh, Scotland. It brought together an international and
highly interdisciplinary scientific audience. As spin offs of the symposium
the organizers published a special issue of the journal Cybernetics and
Systems on "Imitation in Natural and Artificial Systems", Vol. 32 (1-2),
2001 and the edited collection Imitation in Animals and Artifacts, MIT
Press, 2002 [ISBN 0262042037]. The authors of the best contributions to the
current symposium proceedings will be invited to submit to a special
thematic journal issue (details to be announced).
The areas of interest of the symposium include but are not limited to:
* Trying to Imitate - Solving the Correspondence Problem between
differently embodied systems
* Learning by Imitation - harnessing imitation as a means to bootstrap the
acquisition of skills, knowledge, and appropriate behaviours
* The Social Functions of Immediate Imitation
* The Role of Imitation in the Development of Social Cognition Learning of
Perception-Action Mappings via Observation of the Self or Others
* Imitation in Animals: studies and models, theories, comparisons to
mechanisms of Social Learning
* Imitation in Play, Creativity, and Cultural Transmission
* Imitation and Communication
* Robot Imitation: experiments, architectures, role of memory and
prediction, learning sequences of actions and acquiring behaviours
* Mechanisms of Imitation
* Applications in Interactive Systems
* Machine Learning Approaches to Perception and Action for Imitative Behaviour
* Neurobiological Foundations of Imitation
* Imitation and Intentionality
* Imitation and Autism, or Related Disorders
* Programming by Example/Programming by Demonstration
* Behavioural Cloning
Up-to-date information about the symposium is available at
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/aisb03.html
Submissions:
Extended abstracts (3-5 pages) should be sent as four hardcopies to the
following address:
Dr. K. Dautenhahn (AISB Symposium)
Department of Computer Science
University of Hertfordshire
College Lane
Hatfield, AL10 9AB
United Kingdom
The following formats are acceptable: Four hardcopies (any A4 or US Letter
format, max. 5 pp.). Alternatively, electronic submissions are encouraged
in PDF or Plain ASCII only via email to [log in to unmask]
Important dates:
Submission Deadline for Extended Abstracts: 15th January 2003
Notification: 4th February 2003
Submission of full papers: 7th March 2003
Symposium: 7th - 11th April 2003
Tentative Schedule of Symposium:
7th of April 2003, before 14.00: Arrival and registration, 14.00-18.00
Symposium
8th of April, 2003, 9.00-18.00 Symposium
9th of April, 2003, 9.00-16.30 Symposium, 16.30- Train excursion
10th of April, 2003, 9.00-18.00 Symposium
11th of April, 2003, 9.00-12.00 Symposium, Departure
Travel: Nearest UK international airports are Birmingham and Manchester
from which train travel to Aberystwyth is possible. (Birmingham appears to
be the most convenient, with some trains from Birmingham New Street Station
requiring less than 3 hours.) UK rail timetables and other rail information
is available from http://www.rail.co.uk/ukrail/planner/planner.htm . Other
international airports are those in the London area and in Cardiff. Train
journey times are longer from London. More travel and accomodation details
will be publicized later at
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/aisb03.html
Programme Committee (* confirmed)
*Andrew Meltzoff (Washington, USA)
Andrew Whiten (St. Andrews, Scotland)
*Aude Billard (USC/EPFL, USA/Switzerland)
*Brian Scassellati (Yale, USA)
*Cecelia Heyes (UCL, UK)
*Chrystopher Nehaniv (Hertfordshire, UK)
Colwyn Trevarthen (Edinburgh, Scotland)
*Cynthia Breazeal (MIT, USA)
Elisabetta Visalberghi (Roma, Italy)
*Giacomo Rizzolatti (Parma, Italy)
*Harold Bekkering (Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
Henry Lieberman (MIT, USA)
*Irene Pepperberg (MIT, USA)
*Jacqueline Nadel (CNRS, France)
Jean Decety (Washington, USA)
*Johannes Fritz (Konrad-Lorenz Research Station, Austria)
*Josep Call (MPI-Leipzig, Germany)
*Justin Williams (Aberdeen, UK)
*Kerstin Dautenhahn (Hertfordshire, UK)
*Kevin N. Laland (St. Andrews, UK)
Louis M. Herman (Hawaii, USA)
*Ludwig Huber (Vienna, Austria)
*Marco Iacoboni (UCLA, USA)
Robert W. Mitchell (Kentucky, USA)
*Philippe Gaussier (ENSEA, France)
*Stefan Schaal (USC, USA)
Stefan Vogt (Lancaster, UK)
*Thomas R. Zentall (Kentucky, USA)
*Wolfgang Prinz (MPI-Munich, Germany)
*Yiannis Demiris (Imperial College, UK)
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