Please post -- thanks!

[Bill Warren]

Please circulate to your graduating seniors:

GRADUATE TRAINEESHIPS
Visual Navigation in Humans and Robots
Brown University

The Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences and the Department of
Computer Science at Brown University are seeking graduate applicants
interested in visual navigation in humans and robots.  The project
investigates the nature of the spatial knowledge that is used in active
navigation, and how it interacts with the environmental layout, landmark
properties, and navigational task during learning.  The research is based
in a unique virtual reality lab with a 40 x 40 ft wide-area tracker, Kaiser
head-mounted display, and SGI Onyx 2 graphics.  Human experiments study
active navigation and landmark recognition in virtual environments, where
3D structure and properties are easily manipulated.  In conjunction,
biologically-inspired navigation strategies are tested on a mobile robot
platform.  Computational modeling pursues (a) reinforcement learning and
hidden Markov models for spatial navigation and (b) neural net model of the
hippocampus.  The project is under the direction of Leslie Kaelbling
(Computer Science, www.cs.brown.edu), Michael Tarr and William Warren
(Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences, www.cog.brown.edu).  Three to four
graduate traineeships are available, beginning in the Fall of 1999.
Applicants should apply to either of these home departments.  Application
materials can be obtained from:  The Graduate School, Brown University, Box
1867, Providence, RI 02912,  phone (401) 863-2600, www.brown.edu.  The
application deadline is Jan. 1, 1999.

This program is funded by a Learning and Intelligent Systems grant from
NSF, and an IGERT training grant from NSF.

                        -- Bill

                        William H. Warren, Professor
                        Dept. of Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences
                        Box 1978
                        Brown University
                        Providence, RI  02912
                        (401) 863-3980 ofc, 863-2255 FAX
                        Bill_Warren at brown.edu