Cognitive Robotics: The Return of the Body in the Sciences of Mind

 

Bipin Indurkhya

International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India

 

Georgi Stojanov

The American University of Paris, Paris, France

 

Robots are increasingly becoming what computers have been for the sciences of cognition from the 1960s to date. Admittedly, “Cognitive robotics” as such rarely appears in cognitive science curricula but there are now numerous scientific meetings on Developmental/Epigenetic/Evolutionary/Social/Adaptive/Intelligent/Bio Robotics to mention but a few. Robotics, and more generally, control systems theory is taking the place of computers as metaphor of choice for cognitive systems. In a way, we are witnessing a grand return of the body in the sciences of mind. This course represents an exposure to the main ideas in the field.

           

 

Day 1 [download presentation]

The return of the body in the sciences of mind

-         Robots: Beyond the computer metaphor in cognitive science

-         Varieties of embodiment

-         Robotic Evolution: From Shakey to Keepon via Neo, Toto, Cog and Petitagé

-         Developmental robotics: Lessons from developmental psychology

 

Required Readings:

Cisek, P. (1999) “Beyond the computer metaphor: Behavior as interaction”. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6(11-12): 125-142.

 

Georgi Stojanov (2001). Petitagé: A case study in developmental robotics, Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems.  Lund University Cognitive Studies, 85.

 

Optional readings:

Rodney A. Brooks (1991). Intelligence without representation. Artificial Intelligence, 47: (139 – 159)

 

Ziemke, T. (2001). Are Robots Embodied?. In Proc. of the First Intl. Workshop on Epigenetic Robotic. Lund University Cognitive Studies, vol. 85, Lund, Sweden.

 

Benjamin Kuipers, Patrick Beeson, Joseph Modayil and Jefferson Provost (2005).Bootstrap learning of foundational representations.  Developmental Robotics, AAAI Spring Symposium Series

 

 

Day 2  [download presentation]

So, what is Cognitive Robotics?

-         I, Robot: first person, third person, and robot’s point of view

-         Learning intrinsic environment representations from sensory-motor interactions

-         Case studies (Toto, Yamabico)

 

Required Readings:

Andy Clark and Rick Grush (1999). Towards a cognitive robotics. Adaptive Behavior, 7(1):5-16.

 

Maja Mataric (1992). Integration of representation into goal-driven behavior-based robots. IEEE Trans. on Robotics and Automation, 8(3): 304 – 312.

 

J. Tani: "Model-based learning for mobile robot navigation from the dynamical systems perspective", IEEE Trans. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Part B: Cybernetics, Vol.26 (3):421-436, 1996

 

Optional readings:

Kevin O’Regan and Alva Noë (2001). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24: 939 – 1031.

 

 

Day 3  [download presentation]

Social Robots

-         Incorporating cognitive abilities in robots.

-         Designing sociable robots.

-         Eliza-effect and its role in cognitive robotics.

-         Robots and autistic children

-         Case studies (Kismet, Cog, Kozima’s Infanoid, MSU’s SAIL/DEV)

 

Required readings:

Cynthia Breazeal, Daphna Buchsbaum, Jesse Gray,   David Gatenby, and Bruce Blumberg (2004). Learning From and About Others: Towards Using Imitation to Bootstrap the  Social Understanding of Others by Robots. Artificial Life.

 

H. Kozima, C. Nakagawa, and H. Yano (2002). Emergence of imitation mediated by objects. Proc. 2nd international workshop on epigenetic robotics: 59 – 61.

 

H. Kozima, C. Nakagawa, and H. Yano (2004). Can a robot empathize with people? Artificial Life and Robotics, 8(1):83-88

 

A. Billard, B. Robins, K. Dautenhahn, J. Nadel (2006). Building, a Mini-Humanoid Robot for the Rehabilitation of Children with Autism. RESNA Assistive Technology Journal.

 

Optional readings:

C. Breazeal (2003). "Emotion and sociable humanoid robots," E. Hudlika (ed), International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59, pp.119-155.

C. Breazeal (2003). "Towards sociable robots," T. Fong (ed), Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 42(3-4), pp. 167-175.

T. Salter, K. Dautenhahn, R. te Boekhorst (2006) Learning about natural human-robot interaction styles. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 54(2): 127-134.

 

Joe Saunders, Chrystopher Nehaniv, Kerstin Dautenhahn (2006) Using Self-Imitation to Direct Learning. Proc. The 15th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication.

 

http://www.androidscience.com/proceedings2006/6Hanson2006ExploringTheAesthetic.pdf

 

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/alive.html

 

 

Day 4  [download presentation]

Physical-model-based understanding of cognitive phenomena.

-         Theory of mind for robots

-         Body and language

-         Understanding metaphors

 

Required readings:

B. Indurkhya, (1992) Metaphor and Cognition. Dordrecht: Kluwer ; Chaps. 4 & 5.

 

Georgi Stojanov, Goran Trajkovski, Andrea Kulakov (2006). Interactivism in artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent robotics. New Ideas in Psychology. 24 (2):163 – 185.

 

Optional readings:

Webb, B (2001) Can robots make good models of biological behavior? Behavioral and brain sciences, 24(6)

 

Schlesinger, M. (2004). Evolving agents as a metaphor for the developing child. Developmental Science, 7:154-168.

 

Georgi Stojanov (1999). Embodiment as Metaphor: Metaphorizing-in the Environment. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence Vol. 1562: 88-98, Springer

 

 

Day 5  [download presentation]

Present and the Future

-         Challenges of open-ended learning

-         The place and the meaning of internal value system (e.g. motivations, curiosity, emotions) in Cognitive Robot Architectures

-         Interactivism as a proper theoretical framework for CR

 

Required readings:

Mark Bickhard (2004) The Dynamic Emergence of Representation, In H. Clapin, P. Staines, P. Slezak (Eds.) Representation in Mind: New Approaches to Mental Representation. (71-90). Elsevier.

 

Georgi Stojanov, Andrea Kulakov (2006). On Curiosity in Intelligent Robotic Systems, AAAI Fall Symposium on Interaction and Emergent Phenomena in Societies of Agents, TR FS-06-05: 44-51

 

Optional readings:

V. Zykov, E. Mytilinaios, B. Adams and H. Lipson (2005). Self-reproducing machines. Nature, 435 (12 May 2005): 163 – 164.

 

Jordan Zlatev, (2001). The Epigenesis of Meaning in Human Beings, and Possibly in Robots. Minds and Machines, 11(2): 155 – 195. Springer

 

Buisson J.-C. (2004). A rhythm recognition computer program to advocate interactivist perception. Cognitive Science, 28:1(75-87)

 

Assessment

Students who take the course for credit will be asked to write a brief (7-10 page) paper on one of the themes related to Cognitive Robotics discussed in the course.

 

 

Bipin Indurkhya

International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India

 

Bipin Indurkhya did his BE (Electronics) from Bhopal (India), ME (Electronics) from Philips International Institute of Technological Studies, Eindhoven (The Netherlands), and Ph.D. (Computer Science) from University of Massachusetts, Amherst (USA). He spent about twelve years teaching at various universities in the US, most of which was at Boston University. After that he was at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan for over eight years. In the last two years of this period, he was in the Mechanical Engineering Department, where he started a robotics lab and developed undergraduate and graduate courses in robotics which were very popular. Since November 2004, he has been with International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (India).

 

He has lectured on robotics to school children in Japan and in India, and has conducted many hands-on robotics workshops for children in both countries. His other research interests include study and modeling of metaphor, modeling mechanisms of creativity and design of creativity-support systems, computer and education — especially design of computer systems to help learning math and science concepts.

 

Georgi Stojanov

The American University of Paris, Paris, France

Georgi Stojanov is associate professor  of Computer Science at the American University of Paris. His research is in developmental robotics and particularly in implementation of ideas from Piaget’s genetic epistemology. After recieving his PhD degree in Computer Science at the University of Skopje, Macedonia, he taught Artificial Intelligence and Biocybernetics at the same university. He was also the founder and the leader of the Cognitive Robotics Group. In 1999 he has spent one year as a postoc researcher at the Psychology Department, University of Trieste, Italy. In 2004 he was a visiting scholar at the Jean Piaget’s Archives, Geneva University, and visiting professor at the Robotics Lab at the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. Currently, he is a leader of the research project Robot-Act funded by the Macedonian Ministry of Science. With his research team, he participates in AtGentive and XPERO-cognition by experimentation, projects funded by the European Commission within the FP6 scheme.