Connectionists: [meetings] 2nd CFP, Special session - Hybrid Life: Approaches to integrate biological, artificial and cognitive systems, ALife 2018 (Tokyo)

[Manuel Baltieri]

[Apologies for cross-posting]

********** 2nd Call for Papers **********

Special session - Hybrid Life: Approaches to integrate biological, artificial and cognitive systems

https://sites.google.com/view/hybrid-life/ <https://sites.google.com/view/hybrid-life/>


2018 Artificial Life conference (ALife)
Tokyo, JAPAN, 23-27 July 2018 - http://2018.alife.org/ <http://2018.alife.org/>

Invited panelists: Ryota Kanai, Jun Tani (more to come).
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DESCRIPTION:
The main focus of ALife research is the study of natural systems with the goal of understanding what life is. More concretely, ALife defines ways to investigate processes that contribute to the formation and proliferation of living organisms. In this session we focus on three common approaches to tackle this investigation, proposing ways to integrate, extend and possibly improve them. More specifically we refer to: 1) the formalisation of the necessary properties for the definition of life, 2) the implementation of artificial agents, and 3) the study of the relation between life and cognition.

For this special session we propose to start from these well-established Alife methodologies, and extend them through:
a unified formal language for the description and modelling of living, as well as artificial and cognitive systems, e.g. control theory, Bayesian inference, dynamical systems theory, etc.,
the exploration of biological creatures enhanced by artificial systems (or artificial systems augmented with organic parts) in order to investigate the boundaries between living and nonliving organisms, and
the evaluation of coupled biological-artificial systems that could shed light on the importance of interactions among systems for the study of living and cognitive organisms.
This special sessions aims to invite contributions from the fields of psychology, computational neuroscience, HCI, theoretical biology, artificial intelligence, robotics and cognitive science to discuss current research on the formalisation, combination and interaction of artificial/living/cognitive systems from theoretical, modelling and implementational perspectives.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
Formalisation of life and cognition (e.g. dynamical systems theory, stochastic optimal control, Bayesian inference, etc.)
Cognitive robotics
Autopoiesis
Life-mind continuity thesis
Systems biology
Origins-of-life theories with relationships to artificial and cognitive systems
Animal-robot interaction
Bio-inspired robotics
Bio-integrated robotics
Human-machine interaction
Augmented cognition
Sensory substitution
Interactive evolutionary computation
Artificial perception
PANELISTS:

Ryota Kanai
Ryota Kanai is a neuroscientist working on the computational principles underlying consciousness and the brain, and the founder and CEO of an AI startup, Araya, Inc. in Tokyo. His goal is to create artificial consciousness using intrinsic motivation, deep neural networks, and integrated information while taking inspirations from neuroscience. He formerly led a cognitive neuroscience lab at the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
Araya Inc.: http://www.araya.org/ <http://www.araya.org/>

 <http://www.araya.org/>Jun Tani
Jun Tani is a Full Professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), Okinawa, Japan. He is directing the Cognitive Neurorobotics Research Unit. He has investigated the problem of embodied cognition by applying the predictive coding framework to neurorobotics experimental study for more than 20 years. His study has been summarized in his book, “Exploring Robotic Minds: Actions, Symbols, and Consciousness as Self-Organizing Dynamic Phenomena." published from Oxford Univ. Press in 2016.
CNRU at OIST: https://groups.oist.jp/cnru <https://groups.oist.jp/cnru>


Important Dates
19th March 2018 – Paper submission deadline
23rd April 2018 – Paper acceptance notification
21st May 2018 – Camera-ready version
23-27th July 2018 – Artificial Life conference (ALife), Tokyo, Japan

Paper Submission
Papers and abstracts submitted to this special sessions will be reviewed by a selected group of experts from the a-life community as well as from other areas key to our proposal, specifically chosen for this review process. If you are submitting to a special session you will be given the opportunity to select it during the submission process. Submissions to special sessions follow the same format, instructions and deadlines of regular ALife papers, as specified here http://2018.alife.org/instructions-for-authors/ <http://2018.alife.org/instructions-for-authors/>.


Organizers
Manuel Baltieri, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. m.baltieri at sussex.ac.uk <mailto:m.baltieri at sussex.ac.uk>
Keisuke Suzuki, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. k.suzuki at sussex.ac.uk <mailto:filippo.m.bianchi at uit.no>
Hiroyuki Iizuka, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan hiroyukiiizuka at gmail.com <mailto:hiroyukiiizuka at gmail.com>

Contacts
For questions, enquiries and more information please check our website https://sites.google.com/view/hybrid-life/ <https://sites.google.com/view/hybrid-life/> or get in touch with Manuel m.baltieri at sussex.ac.uk <mailto:m.baltieri at sussex.ac.uk>.


All the best,

Manuel, Keisuke, Hiro

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