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===========SECOND CFP===PLEASE POST==============

         SECOND INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON
            IMITATION IN ANIMALS AND ARTIFACTS

      at the AISB'03 Convention, 7th-11th April 2003
   University of Wales, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom, as
    part of the Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of
     Behaviour Convention with the general theme of
         "Cognition in Machines and Animals"


           Symposium Dates: 7-11 April 2002

                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
      Imitation and Animal Social Complexity

Up-to-date information about the symposium will be 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 Herts 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

Scientific Programme Committee (confirmed)

      Andrew Meltzoff (Washington, USA)
      Aude Billard (USC/EPFL, USA/Switzerland)
      Brian Scassellati (Yale, USA)
      Cecelia Heyes (UCL, UK)
      Chrystopher Nehaniv (Hertfordshire, UK)
      Cynthia Breazeal (MIT, USA)
      Giacomo Rizzolatti (Parma, Italy)
      Harold Bekkering (Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
      Irene Pepperberg (MIT, USA)
      Jacqueline Nadel (CNRS, France)
      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)
      Thomas R. Zentall (Kentucky, USA)
      Wolfgang Prinz (MPI-Munich, Germany)
      Yiannis Demiris (Imperial College, UK)
      Peter Hobson (UCL, UK)

Tentative Schedule: 2 pm - 6 pm on 7 April, 9 am - 6 pm on 8 April, 9 am
- 4:30 pm on 9 April, 9 am - 6 pm on 10 April, 9 am - 12 noon on 11 April.

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.

-----------------------------------------------------
Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn
Reader in Artificial Intelligence
Adaptive Systems Research Group
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/ASRG.html
The University of Hertfordshire, Department of Computer Science
College Lane, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, United Kingdom
URL: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqkd
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Fax: +44-1707-284-303 Tel: +44-1707-284-333