Connectionists: Free Robotic workshops in Zürich

[Juan Pablo Carbajal]

Dear All,

On January 2011 there will be two Hands-on workshops on topics that
may be of your interest. The workshops are in the context of the
AMARSi Project (https://www.amarsi-project.eu/) but their are open to
the general public; feel free to
forward this message to people who you think may also be interested.
Due to space limitations we will prioritize attendees from AMARSi and
the hosting venues. Please, send your application as soon as possible.

Information about the workshops is given below.

"Hands-on introduction to Reservoir Computing", given by Tim Waegeman,
Francis Wyffels and Ken Caluwaerts from Reservoir Lab, Ghent
University

In this three day tutorial we will start with a theoretical
introduction to Reservoir Computing, an efficient training method for
recurrent neural networks. Next, an overview of OGER is given, a
python toolbox for rapidly building, training and evaluating modular
learning architectures. The emphasis of the tutorial is on practical
applications such as time series prediction, speech recognition and
robotics. Participants will have ample opportunity to bring forward
their own research problems with respect to Reservoir Computing.

Activities:
- Theoretical introduction to Reservoir computing
- Setup and use of the OGER toolbox (Reservoir Computing Toolbox for
Python)
- Solution to practical problems
- Applications in robotics
- Group activity

Date: 2nd Week (10-12) January 2011
Venue: ZHAW Winterthur
Available seats: 20

"Probabilistic Inference for Motor Control", given by Gerhard Neumann
and Elmar Rückert from the Technische Universität Graz.

In this workshop we will start with an short overview over graphical
models, inference in graphical models, message passing, approximate
message passing. Subsequently we will apply the inference in graphical
models framework for motor planning. We will present the relevant
theory  and also show some practical examples in MATLAB.

Activities: - Bayesian inference: theory and examples.
      - Graphical models for motor planning  and examples.
      - Group Activity

Date: End of 2nd(13-14) Week of January 2011.
Venue: AILab Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Zürich.
Available seats: 10

You can find the registration form here

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGhyLTVURkZZOGZlcEh3eTdDeV9XMWc6MQ

For further information and questions contact Juan Pablo Carbajal
carbajal at ifi.uzh.ch

-- 
M. Sc. Juan Pablo Carbajal
-----
PhD Student
University of Zürich
www.ailab.ch/carbajal