Connectionists: Workshop "Learning Multimodal Agents"

[Jorge Dávila Chacón]

**************************************************

CALL FOR PAPERS

The International Graduate Research Group CINACS (http://www.cinacs.org/)
makes an open call for papers and presentations for a workshop to be
held at the University of Hamburg:

"Learning Multimodal Agents"
September 7, 2012
Hamburg, Germany

https://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/CINACS-2012

We aim the production of a special issue in a journal with a focus on
cognition and AI, e.g. Connection Science.
The workshop will be held also in Hamburg the Friday before MFI 2012 -
International Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Information Integration
http://www.mfi-2012.org/


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Natural systems still outperform artificial ones in most cognitive tasks.
Particularly there is ample space for improvement in robot perception and
motor control. A particular disadvantage of artificial systems is their
primarily unimodal processing, while natural systems usually have access
to several sensory modalities.

In recent years brain-inspired architectures have proven to be a promising
approach for closing this gap. More specifically, multisensory or
cross-modal interaction is a research topic currently receiving much
attention in the field of bio-inspired robotics. However, other areas such
as cognitive-neuroscience, intelligent system architectures and autonomous
robotics are also potential beneficiaries from this paradigm.

This workshop focuses on the topics of cross-modal interactions and
integration. Contributions could also be oriented to the fusion of
biological, engineering or computational approaches. The creation of
complementary knowledge in those fields is intended to broaden the
theoretical background, and to provide fresh ideas for technical and
clinical applications.


TOPICS OF INTEREST

- Neural network models for multimodal robotic control
- Introduction of biological principles into artificial neural systems
- Bioinspired generation and representation of multimodal percepts
- Mechanisms for attention in the presence of multisensory information
- Learning of transformations between modalities
- General principles for resolving cross-modal conflicts
- Cross-modal association, learning and problem-solving
- Architectures suitable for cross-modal tasks
- Experimental setups for multimodal research in robotics
- Cognitive developmental robotics
- Integration of language, vision and motor response
- Learning systems for Human-Computer Interaction
- Multimodal communication-learning


INVITED SPEAKERS

- Dr. Jindong Liu (Imperial College London)


IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission: July 8, 2012 (No extension will be given)
Notification of acceptance: July 23, 2012
Presentations day: September 7, 2012


PAPER SUBMISSION AND PRESENTATION

The workshop is free of charge. Authors are invited to submit papers up to
6 letter size pages according to the IEEE format:
http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html

Papers must be submitted to the following e-mail address:
davila at informatik.uni-hamburg.de

At least one author of each accepted paper must give a presentation at
the workshop. When submitting your manuscript, please provide the name of
the author attending the event.


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

- Stefan Wermter (University of Hamburg)
- Cornelius Weber (University of Hamburg)
- Jorge Davila-Chacon (University of Hamburg)
- Johannes Bauer (University of Hamburg)


SPONSORSHIP

This event is organized in the context of the international research group
on "Cross-Modal Interaction in Natural and Artificial Cognitive Systems"
(CINACS) http://www.cinacs.org/


______________________________
University of Hamburg
Department of Informatics
Knowledge Technology Group

Vogt Koelln Str. 30
22527 Hamburg, Germany
Fax: +49 40 428 83 2515
Secretary: +49 40 428 83 2433
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/

**************************************************



-- 
__________________________________________________

Jorge Dávila Chacón
Research Associate
Knowledge Technology Group
Department of Informatics
University of Hamburg

Vogt Koelln Str. 30
22527 Hamburg, Germany
Phone: +49 40 42883 2535
Fax: +49 40 42883 2515
E-mail: davila at informatik.uni-hamburg.de
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~davila/
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/
__________________________________________________