SAB94 Program and Registration

Phil Husbands philh at cogs.susx.ac.uk
Thu May 19 13:51:36 EDT 1994


               CONFERENCE PROGRAM AND INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE
               ------------------------------------------------


                            FROM ANIMALS TO ANIMATS
     Third International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB94)


                        Brighton, UK, August 8-12, 1994


The object of  the conference is  to bring together  researchers in  ethology,
psychology,  ecology,  cybernetics,  artificial  intelligence,  robotics,  and
related fields  so  as to  further  our  understanding of  the  behaviors  and
underlying mechanisms that allow animals and, potentially, robots to adapt and
survive in uncertain environments.

The conference  will  focus  particularly  on  well-defined  models,  computer
simulations, and  built  robots in  order  to help  characterize  and  compare
various  organizational  principles  or  architectures  capable  of   inducing
adaptive behavior in real or artificial animals.


Technical Programme
===================

The full technical programme is given below.  There will be a single track  of
oral presentations,  with poster  sessions separately  timetabled. There  will
also be computer, video and robotic demonstrations. Major topics covered  will
include:

   Individual and collective behavior   Autonomous robots
   Neural correlates of behavior        Hierarchical and parallel organizations
   Perception and motor control         Emergent structures and behaviors
   Motivation and emotion               Problem solving and planning
   Action selection and behavioral      Goal directed behavior
    sequences                           Neural networks and evolutionary
   Ontogeny, learning and evolution      computation
   Internal world models                Characterization of environments
    and cognitive processes             Applied adaptive behavior

Invited speakers
================

Prof. Michael Arbib, University of Southern California,
"Rats Running and Humans Reaching: The Brain's Multiple Styles of Learning"

Prof. Rodney Brooks, MIT, "Coherent Behavior from Many Adaptive Processes"

Prof. Herbert Roitblat, University of Hawaii,
"Mechanisms and Process in Animal Behaviour: Models of Animals, Animals as
Models"

Prof. John Maynard Smith, University of Sussex,"The Evolution of Animal
Signals"

Prof. Jean-Jacques Slotine, MIT, "Stability in Adaptation and Learning"


Proceedings
===========

The conference proceeding will  be published by  MIT Press/Bradford Books  and
will be available at the conference.

Official Language: English
==========================

Demonstrations
==============

Computer, video and robotic demonstrations are invited. They should be of work
relevant to the conference. If you wish to offer a demonstration, please  send
a letter with your registration form briefly describing your contribution  and
indicating space and equipment requirements.

Registration
============

Registration details are given after the technical program. Full conference
details will be sent on registration.


                              CONFERENCE PROGRAM
                              ------------------

Sunday 7th August
-----------------
Old Ship Hotel
7.00pm: Welcoming Reception and Registration

***All Conference Sessions in Brighton Conference Centre East Wing
Monday 8th August
-----------------
 9:00 Coffee and Late Registration
10:30 Conference opening
11:00 From SAB90 to SAB94: Four Years of Animat Research
      Jean-Arcady Meyer and Agnes Guillot, ENS, Paris
11:30 Invited Lecture: Mechanism and Process in Animal Behavior: Models of
      Animals, Animals as Models
      Herbert L. Roitblat, University of Hawaii
12:30 Lunch
14:00 Modeling the Role of Cerebellum in Prism Adaptation
      Michael A. Arbib, Nicolas Schweighofer, U. Southern California
      and W. T. Thach, Washington University
14:30 Robotic Experiments in Cricket Phonotaxis
      Barbara Webb, University of Edinburgh
15:00 How to Watch Your Step: Biological Evidence and an Initial Model
      Patrick R. Green, University of Nottingham
15:30 On Why Better Robots Make It Harder
      Tim Smithers, Euskal Herriko Unibersitatea
16:00 Coffee
16:30 What is Cognitive and What is *Not* Cognitive?
      Frederick Toates, Open University
17:00 Action-Selection in Hamsterdam: Lessons from Ethology
      Bruce Blumberg, MIT
17:30 Behavioral Dynamics of Escape and Avoidance: A Neural Network Approach
      Nestor A. Schmajuk, Duke University
18:00 End.

Tuesday 9th August
------------------
09:00 Invited Lecture: The Evolution of Animal Signals
      John Maynard Smith, University of Sussex
10:00 Coffee
10:30 An Hierarchical Classifier System Implementing a Motivationally
      Autonomous Animat
      Jean-Yves Donnart and Jean-Arcady Meyer, ENS, Paris
11:00 Spatial Learning and Representation in Animats
      Tony J. Prescott, University of Sheffield
11:30 Location Recognition in Rats and Robots
      William D. Smart and John Hallam, University of Edinburgh
12:00 Emergent Functionality in Human Infants
      Julie C. Rutkowska, University of Sussex
12:30 Lunch
14:00 -----------POSTER AND DEMONSTRATION SESSION------------
      **Posters listed at the end of this schedule
      **Full demonstrations timetable available later
16:00 Coffee
16:30 Posters and Demo's continue
20:00 End.

Wednesday 10th August
---------------------
09:00 Invited Lecture: Stability in Adaptation and Learning
      Jean-Jacques Slotine, MIT
10:00 Coffee
10:30 Connectionist Environment Modelling in a Real Robot
      William Chesters and G. M. Hayes, University of Edinburgh
11:00 A Hybrid Architecture for Learning Continuous Environmental Models in
      Maze Problems
      A. G. Pipe, T. C. Fogarty, and A. Winfield, University West of England
11:30 The Blind Breeding the Blind: Adaptive Behavior without Looking
      Peter M. Todd, Stewart W. Wilson, Rowland Institute, Anil B. Somayaji,
      and Holly Yanco, MIT

12:00 Memoryless Policies: Theoretical Limitations and Practical Results
      Michael L. Littman, Brown University
12:30 End.

Thursday 11th August
--------------------
09:00 Invited Lecture: Rats Running and Humans Reaching: The Brain's Multiple
      Styles of Learning
      Michael Arbib, University of Southern California
10:00 Coffee
10:30 A Comparison of Q-Learning and Classifier Systems
      Marco Dorigo and Hugues Bersini, Universite Libre de Bruxelles
11:00 Paying Attention to What's Important: Using Focus of Attention to
      Improve Unsupervised Learning
      Leonard N. Foner and Pattie Maes, MIT
11:30 Learning Efficient Reactive Behavioral Sequences from Basic Reflexes in
      a Goal-Directed Autonomous Robot
      Jos'e del R. Mill'an, European Commission Research Centre
12:00 A Topological Neural Map for On-Line Learning: Emergence of Obstacle
      Avoidance in a Mobile Robot
      Philippe Gaussier and Stephane Zrehen, EPFL
12:30 Lunch
14:00 A Distributed Adaptive Control System for a Quadruped Mobile Robot
      Bruce L. Digney and M. M. Gupta, University of Saskatchewan
14:30 Reinforcement Tuning of Action Synthesis and Selection in a 'Virtual
      Frog'.
      Simon Giszter, MIT
15:00 Achieving Rapid Adaptations in Robots by Means of External Tuition
      Ulrich Nehmzow and Brendan McGonigle, University of Edinburgh
15:30 Two-link Robot Brachiation with Connectionist Q-Learning
      Fuminori Saito and Toshio Fukada, Nagoya University
16:00 Coffee
16:30 Integrating Reactive, Sequential, and Learning Behavior Using Dynamical
      Neural Networks
      Brian Yamauchi and Randall Beer, Case Western Reserve University
17:00 Seeing The Light: Artificial Evolution, Real Vision
      Inman Harvey, Phil Husbands, and Dave Cliff, University of Sussex
17:30 End.

Friday 12th August
-----------------
09:00 Invited Lecture: Coherent Behavior from Many Adaptive Processes
      Rodney A. Brooks, MIT
10:00 Coffee
10:30 Evolution of Corridor Following Behavior in a Noisy World
      Craig W. Reynolds, Electronic Arts
11:00 Protean Behavior in Dynamic Games: Arguments for the Co-Evolution of
      Pursuit-Evasion Tactics
      Geoffrey F. Miller and Dave Cliff, University of Sussex
11:30 Towards Robot Cooperation
      David McFarland, University of Oxford
12:00 A Case Study in the Behavior-Oriented Design of Autonomous Agents
      Luc Steels, University of Brussels
12:30 Lunch
14:00 Learning to Behave Socially
      Maja J. Mataric, MIT
14:30 Signalling and Territorial Aggression: An Investigation by Means of
      Synthetic Behavioral Ecology
      Peter de Bourcier and Michael Wheeler, University of Sussex
15:00 Panel Session
16:00 Coffee
16:30 SAB96 -- Discussion of SAB94, Planning of SAB96.
17:30 End.

----POSTERS-----to be presented on the afternoon of Tuesday 9th August.
---------------- Authors Note: Display space = 100cm * 150cm per poster

Insect Vision and Olfaction: Different Neural Architectures for Different
Kinds of Sensory Signal?
D. Osorio, University of Sussex, Wayne M. Getz, UC Berkeley
and Jurgen Rybak, FU-Berlin

The Interval Reduction Strategy for Monitoring Cupcake Problems
Paul R. Cohen, Marc S. Atkin, and Eric A. Hansen, University of Massachusetts

Visual Control of Altitude and Speed in a Flying Agent
Fabrizio Mura and Nicolas Franceschini, CNRS, Marseille

Organizing an Animat's Behavioural Repertoires Using Kohonen Feature Maps
Nigel Ball, University of Cambridge

Action Selection for Robots in Dynamic Environments through Inter-Behaviour
Bidding
Michael Sahota, University of British Columbia

Using Second Order Neural Connections for Motivation of Behavioral Choices
Gregory M. Werner, UCLA

A Place Navigation Algorithm Based on Elementary Computing Procedures and
Associative Memories
Simon Benhamou, CNRS Marseille, Pierre Bouvet, University of Geneva,
and Bruno Poucet, CNRS Marseille

Self-Organizing Topographic Maps and Motor Planning
Pietro Morasso and Vittorio Sanguineti, University of Genova

The Effect of Memory Length on the Foraging Behavior of a Lizard
Sharoni Shafir and Jonathan Roughgarden, Stanford University

An Architecture for Learning to Behave
Ashley M. Aitken, University of New South Wales

Reinforcement Learning for Homeostatic Endogenous Variables
Hugues Bersini, Universite Libre de Bruxelles

An Architecture for Representing and Learning Behaviors by Trial and Error
Pascal Blanchet, CRIN-CNRS/INRIA Lorraine

The Importance of Leaky Levels for Behavior-Based AI
Gregory M. Saunders, John F. Kolen, and Jordan B. Pollack, Ohio State
University

Reinforcement Learning with Dynamic Covering of State-Action Space:
Partitioning Q-Learning
Re'mi Munos and Jocelyn Patinel, CEMAGREF

The Five Neuron Trick: Using Classical Conditioning to Learn How to Seek Light
Tom Scutt, University of Nottingham

Adaptation in Dynamic Environments Through a Minimal Probability of Exploration
Gilles Venturini, Universite de Paris-Sud

Automatic Creation of An Autonomous Agent: Genetic Evolution of a
Neural-Network Driven Robot
Dario Floreano, University of Trieste, and Francesco Mondada, EPFL

The Effect of Parasitism on the Evolution of a Communication Protocol in an
Artificial Life Simulation
Phil Robbins, University of Greenwich

Integration of Reactive and Telerobotic Control in Multi-Agent Robotic Systems
Ronald C. Arkin and Khaled S. Ali, Georgia Institute of Technology

MINIMEME: Of Life and Death in the Noosphere
Stephane Bura, Universite Paris VI

Learning Coordinated Motions in a Competition for Food Between Ant Colonies
Masao Kubo and Yukinori Kakazu, Hokkaido University

Emergent Colonization and Graph Partitioning
Pascale Kuntz and Dominique Snyers, Telecom Bretagne

Diversity and Adaptation in Populations of Clustering Ants
Erik D. Lumer, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, and Baldo Faieta, Zetes
Electronics

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conference Committee
====================


    Conference Chairs:

Philip HUSBANDS        Jean-Arcady MEYER         Stewart WILSON
School of Cognitive    Groupe de Bioinformatique The Rowland Institute
 and Comp. Sciences    Ecole Normale Superieure    for Science
University of Sussex   46 rue d'Ulm              100 Edwin H. Land Blvd.
Brighton BN1 9QH, UK   75230 Paris Cedex 05      Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
philh at cogs.susx.ac.uk  meyer at wotan.ens.fr        wilson at smith.rowland.org

   Program Chair:      David CLIFF
                       School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
                       University of Sussex
                       Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
                       davec at cogs.susx.ac.uk

   Financial Chair:    P. Husbands, H. Roitblat
   Local Arrangements: I. Harvey, P. Husbands

Program Committee
=================

  M. Arbib, USA            R. Arkin, USA            R. Beer, USA
  A. Berthoz, France       L. Booker, USA           R. Brooks, USA
  P. Colgan, Canada        T. Collett, UK           H. Cruse, Germany
  J. Delius, Germany       J. Ferber, France        N. Franceschini, France
  S. Goss, Belgium         J. Halperin, Canada      I. Harvey, UK
  I. Horswill, USA         A. Houston, UK           L. Kaelbling, USA
  H. Klopf, USA            L-J. Lin, USA            P. Maes, USA
  M. Mataric, USA          D. McFarland, UK         G. Miller, UK
  R. Pfeifer, Switzerland  H. Roitblat, USA         J. Slotine, USA
  O. Sporns, USA           J. Staddon, USA          F. Toates, UK
  P. Todd, USA             S. Tsuji, Japan          D. Waltz, USA
  R. Williams, USA

Local Arrangements
==================

For general enquiries contact:

SAB94 Administration
COGS
University of Sussex
Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QH
UK

Tel: +44 (0)273 678448
Fax: +44 (0)273 671320
Email: sab94 at cogs.susx.ac.uk

ftp
===

The SAB94 archive can be accessed by anonymous ftp.

%   ftp ftp.cogs.susx.ac.uk
login: anonymous
password: <your_email at your_address>
ftp>   cd pub/sab94
ftp>   get <filename>*
ftp>   quit

* Files available at present are:

README
announcement
reg_document
hotel_booking_form
program

Sponsors
========

Sponsors include:

    British Telecom     University of Sussex    Applied AI Systems Inc
    Uchidate Co., Ltd.  Mitsubishi Corporation  Brighton Council
    The Renaissance Trust

Financial Support
================

Limited financial  support may  be available  to graduate  students and  young
researchers in the field. Applicants  should submit a letter describing  their
research,  the  year  they  expect  to  receive  their  degree,  a  letter  of
recommendation from their supervisor, and confirmation that they have no other
sources of funds available. The number and  size of awards will depend on  the
amount of money available.

Venue
=====

The conference will  be held at  the Brighton Centre,  the largest  conference
venue in the  town, situated  on the seafront  in Brighton's  town centre  and
adjacent to the 'Lanes' district.

Brighton is a thriving seaside  resort, with many local attractions,  situated
on the south  coast of  England. It  is just a  50 minute  train journey  from
London, and  30 minutes  from London  Gatwick airport  -- when  making  travel
arrangements we advise, where possible, using London Gatwick in preference  to
London Heathrow.


Social Activities
=================

A welcome reception will be held on Sunday 7th August. The conference  banquet
will take place on Thursday 11th August. There will also be opportunities  for
sightseeing, wine cellar tours and a visit to Brighton's Royal Pavilion.

Accommodation
=============

We have  organised preferential  rates  for SAB94  delegates at  several  good
quality hotels along the seafront. All hotels are within easy walking distance
of the Brighton Centre. Costs vary from  29 pounds to 70 pounds inclusive  per
night for bed and breakfast. An accommodation booking form will be sent out to
you on request,  or can be  obtained by ftp  (instructions above). Details  of
cheaper budget  accommodation  can  be obtained  from  Brighton  Accommodation
Marketing Bureau (Tel: +44 273 327560 Fax: +44 273 777409).

Insurance
=========

The SAB94  organisers and  sponsors  can not  accept liablility  for  personal
injuries,  or  for  loss  or  damage  to  property  belonging  to   conference
participants or  their  guests. It  is  recommended that  attendees  take  out
personal travel insurance.

Registration Fees
=================

Registration includes: the  conference proceedings;  technical program;  lunch
each day (except Wednesday when there will be no afternoon sessions);  welcome
reception; free entry  to Brighton's Royal  Pavilion; complimentary  temporary
membership of the Arts Club of Brighton.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                               REGISTRATION FORM

 3rd International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour (SAB94)
                               8-12 August 1994
                         Brighton Centre, Brighton, UK

Please complete the form below and send to the conference office with full
payment.

Name: ______________________________________________________________

Address: __________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

Country: ___________________________________________________________

Postal Code or Zip Code: ___________________________________________

Email: _____________________________________________________________

Telephone:____________________________ Fax:_________________________

Professional Affiliation:___________________________________________

Name(s) of accompanying person(s):

1. ________________________________________________________________

2. ________________________________________________________________


Dietary needs: ____________________________________________________

Any other special needs: _________________________________________

PAYMENTS
========

All payments must be made in pounds sterling.

Delegates:
=========

Tick if you will be attending the welcome reception on Sunday 7 August _____

Tick appropriate boxes.
                              Individual             Student

Early (before 15 May 1994)    200 pounds ( )         100 pounds ( )
Late  (after  15 May 1994)    230 pounds ( )         115 pounds ( )
On site                       260 pounds ( )         130 pounds ( )

Banquet                       18 pounds  ( )         18 pounds  ( )


STUDENTS MUST SUBMIT PROOF OF THEIR STATUS ALONG WITH THEIR REGISTRATION FEE.

Accompanying persons:
===================
    Welcoming reception   10 pounds
    Banquet               28 pounds


TOTAL PAYMENT

___________ Registration

___________ Banquet (delegate rate) (Please tick if vegetarian _____)

___________ Banquet (guest rate)    (Please tick if vegetarian _____)

___________ Reception (guests only)

___________ Donation to support student scholarship fund


METHOD OF PAYMENT
=================

Please make payable to "SAB94", pounds sterling only.

_____ Bank Draft or International Money Order:  _ __________________ pounds


_____ Cheque: (drawn on a UK bank or Euro Cheque) __________________ pounds


Send to:

SAB Administration
COGS
University of Sussex
Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QH
UK

CANCELLATIONS
=============

The SAB Administration  should be  notified in writing  of all  cancellations.
Cancellations received before 10 July will incur a 20% administration  charge.
We cannot accept any cancellations after that date.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


More information about the Connectionists mailing list