EDEC2001 (2nd call)

[Max Lungarella]

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CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

EDEC2001 - EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF EMBODIED COGNITION (2nd call)

Symposium at the 3rd International Conference on Cognitive Science
              August 27-31, 2001, Beijing, China 


SCOPE
The objective of the symposium is to bring together researchers from
cognitive science, psychology, engineering, robotics, artificial
intelligence, philosophy, and related fields so as to further our
understanding of embodiment and development, in particular their mutual
relationship. Ultimately, the goal is to understand the emergence of
high-level cognition of an organism interacting with its physical and
social environment over extended periods of time.


FOCUS
The symposium will focus on research that explicitly takes embodiment
into account, either at the level of computational models, or real-world
devices, and on empirical work that explicitly attempts to explain the
relation of developmental processes to embodiment. Finally,
contributions giving a broad and novel philosophical or methodological
view on embodied cognition are welcome.


CONTRIBUTIONS
Contributions are solicited from the following areas (but not restricted
to this list):

- Cognitive developmental robotics
- Neural mechanisms of learning and development (e.g. neural networks, 
statistical, information theoretic)
- Development of sensory and motor systems
- Perception-action coupling, sensory-motor coordination
- Categorization, object exploration
- Communication and Social interaction
- Methodologies
- Debates and philosophical issues (e.g. constructivism vs.
selectionism, 
nature nurture, scalability, symbol grounding)


ORGANIZATION
This will be a one-day symposium with a number of talks, with a lot of
room for discussion, and a poster session. The poster session will be
over a cocktail to ensure relaxed atmosphere.


FORM OF CONTRIBUTION
Contributions can be in the form of full papers, or abstracts for
posters. Full papers must be 5 pages maximum, with fonts at least 12 pt.
For posters and work in progress, please submit a one-page abstract.
Accepted contributions will be published in the proceedings of the ICCS
2001.


GUIDELINES FOR ABSTRACT/PAPER SUBMISSION
The contribution should be submitted electronically to
lunga at ifi.unizh.ch (Max Lungarella) in pdf or MS Word files.


IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline (full-length paper and abstract): April 30, 2001 
Notice of acceptance: May 31, 2001


PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Rolf Pfeifer (AI Lab, University of Zurich, chair)
Max Lungarella (AI Lab, University of Zurich, Switzerland)
Yasuo Kuniyoshi (Electrotechnical Laboratory, Tsukuba, Japan)
Olaf Sporns (Department of Psychology, Indiana University, Bloomington,
IN, USA)
Giorgio Metta (LIRA-Lab, University of Genova, Italy)
Giulio Sandini (LIRA-Lab, University of Genova, Italy)
Rafael Nunez (University of Fribourgh, Switzerland, and University
  of California, Berkeley)