Connectionists: CFP: Special Issue on Neurobiologically Inspired Robotics: Enhanced Autonomy Through Neuromorphic Cognition

[Jeff Krichmar]

Dear Connectionists,

I hope some of you will consider submitting to this special issue of Neural Networks.

Neurobiologically inspired robotics goes by many names: brain-based devices, cognitive robots, neurorobots, and neuromorphic robots, to name a few. The field has grown into an exciting area of research and engineering.

The common goal is twofold: Firstly, developing a system that demonstrates some level of cognitive ability can lead to a better understanding of the neural machinery that realizes cognitive function. The often used phrase, “understanding through building”, implies that one can get a deep understanding of a system by constructing physical artifacts that can operate in the real-world. In building and studying neurobiologically inspired robots, scientists must address theories of neuroscience that couple brain, body, and behavior.  Secondly, the deep theoretical understanding of cognition, neurobiology and behavior obtained by constructing physical systems, could lead to a system that demonstrates capabilities commonly found in the animal kingdom, but rarely found in artificial systems, most notably their adaptive and flexible autonomous behavior. There have already been some successes that meet these goals. For example, navigation models based on the hippocampus are now deployed on robots that autonomously explore their environment. Machine image processing systems based on visual cortex have been used in a number of unsupervised recognition and perception applications. Robots designed to address impairments due to disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, autism spectrum disorder, and attentional deficit disorders, are being used as therapeutic and diagnostic tools without the need for constant caretaker supervision.

Despite these successes, the field is still in its infancy and basic research is needed. In particular, we are interested in papers that describe: 1) How models of cognitive functions, such as attention, decision-making, learning and memory, perception, and social cognition can be constructed on physical robots. 2) How the neuromorphic devices, which are designed to run neural algorithms with low-power, can advance the construction of autonomous robotics. 3) How the theoretical and engineering lessons learned from constructing neurobiologically inspired robots can transfer to autonomous robots carrying out practical applications.

This Special Issue invites papers that address the three broad topics described above.

Topics of interest

	• Adaptive behavior
	• Active sensing
	• Artificial empathy
	• Cortical computing
	• Developmental robotics
	• Embodied Cognition
	• Neuromorphic Engineering
	• On-line learning and memory systems
	• Prediction and planning
	• Socially assistive robotics

Guest Editors

Jeffrey Krichmar, University of California, Irvine
Minoru Asada,  Osaka University
Jorg Conradt, Technische Universitat München

Important Dates
Submission due: 1 Feb 2015
Acceptance notification: 1 Aug 2015
Expected publication: 1 Nov 2015

Submission instructions

Each paper for submission should be formatted according to the style and length limit of Neural Networks. Please refer complete Author Guidelines at http://www.elsevier.com/journals/neural-networks/0893-6080/guide-for-authors. Note that published papers and those currently under review by other journals or conferences are prohibited. A separate cover letter should be submitted that includes the paper title, the list of all authors and their affiliations, and information of the contact author. Each paper will be reviewed rigorously, and possibly in two rounds, i.e., minor/major revisions will undergo another round of review. Prospective authors are invited to submit their papers directly via the online submission system at http://ees.elsevier.com/neunet/.  To ensure that all manuscripts are correctly included into the special issue described, it is important that all authors select “SI: Neurobiological Robotics” when they reach the "Article Type" step in the submission process.

Jeff Krichmar
Department of Cognitive Sciences
2328 Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-5100
jkrichma at uci.edu
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkrichma