Connectionists: Symposium on Emergent Social Behaviours in Bio-hybrid Systems

[Stuart Wilson]

Dear colleagues, 
 
It is our pleasure to announce the forthcoming 'Symposium on Emergent Social Behaviours in Bio-hybrid Systems'. The symposium will run as a satellite to the Living Machines 2013 conference (http://www.csnetwork.eu/livingmachines/conf2013), and will take place on Friday 2nd August in the Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Imperial College London. Registration will be on a first-come-first-served basis, so please book your place early! For more details please see:

http://www.csnetwork.eu/livingmachines/conf2013/workshop

This symposium will explore the emergence of biohybrid societies comprising living systems (i.e., organisms) and embodied artificial systems (i.e., robots). Biohybrid societies research is a new science, which poses exciting new questions at the interface between computational biology, biomimetic and bio-inspired robotics, swarm robotics and swarm intelligence, and artificial intelligence and artificial life. How can living and artificial systems self-organise to generate complex aggregate behaviours? By what processes can mixed societies maintain group-level homeostasis? How might organisms and robots compete and/or cooperate in order to achieve common goals? What can biohybrid societies research reveal about the organisation of natural social systems? How can control over the individual be used to exert control over the group? By what laws might biohybrid societies emerge, develop, and evolve? Biohybrid societies research also raises important ethical questions about potential benefits to and impacts upon animal welfare, about the safety of biohybrid systems, and about the potential impacts of biohybrid technologies for e.g., agriculture, entertainment, and health. With these questions in mind, the symposium will feature invited talks tackling ‘core’ themes, as well as exploratory short-talks at open invitation, a poster session, and a structured panel discussion addressing broader concepts and potential impacts.
 
Confirmed speakers:
 
Terence Deacon, University of California, Berkeley.
title TBC
 
Chrisantha Fernando, Queen Mary University of London.
Darwinian Neurodynamics
 
Andrew Adamatzky, University of the West of England.
Advances in Physarum Machines
 
Thomas Schmickl, University of Graz.
From Biology & Robots to Biohybrid Systems
 
Roderich Groß, University of Sheffield.
Collective Behavior: Minimalism, Evolution and Science Automation
 
José Halloy, Universite Paris Diderot.
Biological and technological challenges of social bio-hybrid systems of animals and robots generating collective intelligence
  
We look forward to meeting you in London, 
 
Stuart Wilson
Thomas Schmickl
José Halloy

-- 
Dr. Stuart P. Wilson (Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience)
Department of Psychology (Room 2-42)
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, S10 2TP, UK.

Tel: +44 (0) 114 222 6595 
Fax: +44 (0) 114 276 6515 
Email: S.P.Wilson at Sheffield.ac.uk 
Group: abrg.group.shef.ac.uk/people/stuart/
Personal: spwilson.staff.shef.ac.uk
Departmental: www.sheffield.ac.uk/psychology/staff/academic/stuart_wilson

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