Conscious-Robots team is the 2K BotPrize 2010 Competition Winner!!!

The third edition of the 2K BotPrize Competition was decided recently in Copenhagen, at the 2010 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games. We are happy to announce that the Spanish team – Conscious-Robots – formed by Jorge Muñoz and Raúl Arrabales won this year edition of this competition, a Turing Test adapted to the domain of videogames [1].

Raúl Arrabales (left) and Jorge Muñoz (right) with the 2K BotPrize trophy (by Peter Reynolds)

The aim of the 2K BotPrize competition is to develop a computer game bot which is undistinguishable from a human player, i.e. able to pass the Turing Test. Although the Conscious-Robots bot could not completely pass the Turing Test, she achieved a humanness rating of 31.8%. As of today, the Turing Test level intelligence has never been achieved by a machine. However, this year the gap between humans and bots was reduced, having a small difference between the Conscious-Robots bot (31.8%) and the least “human” human player (35.4%) – see results. -> READ MORE.

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Now the three invited papers by Aaron Sloman that were recently published in the third issue of the International Journal of Machine Consciousness (IJMC) are freely available:
 

Vol. 2 No. 1 (June 2010) pp. 1-18
AN ALTERNATIVE TO WORKING ON MACHINE CONSCIOUSNESS
AARON SLOMAN
DOI: 10.1142/S1793843010000400

Vol. 2 No. 1 (June 2010) pp. 75-116
MACHINE CONSCIOUSNESS: RESPONSE TO COMMENTARIES
AARON SLOMAN
DOI: 10.1142/S1793843010000412

Vol. 2 No. 1 (June 2010) pp. 117-169
PHENOMENAL AND ACCESS CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE "HARD" PROBLEM: A VIEW FROM THE DESIGNER STANCE
AARON SLOMAN
DOI: 10.1142/S1793843010000424

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Gostai releases an Open Source Edition of URBI (Urbi 2.1 - Open Source AGPL v3)

URBI is a software development platform for robotics that supports asynchronous event management and orchestration. URBI also provides software components and interfaces to many robots like Lego NXT and Aldebaran Nao.

Recently, Gostai have decided to go Open Source and release a new version of URBI under a licence AGPL v3 (they also maintain a commercial licence for commercial partners). Source code is available for the URBI Kernel, however the code of the Gostai Studio graphical interface is not included in the open source initiative.

More details can be found at: Gostai.com.

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Faculty positions in Cognitive Robotics at ENSTA ParisTech

The Laboratory of Electronics and Computer Science at ENSTA ParisTech is opening permanent faculty positions in the field of cognitive robotics. ENSTA ParisTech is one of the most renowned French institutes of engineering education and research (Grande École).

Located in Paris, it offers graduate level scientific education, excellent research facilities and a broad international network. It is a founding member of ParisTech, the Paris Institute of Technology, which brings together twelve of the foremost French Grandes Écoles covering nearly the whole spectrum of science and engineering.

The faculty positions are opened in the Cognitive Robotics research group. Specific areas of interest include:

* Computer vision
* Semantic perception
* Multi-modal perception
* Machine learning and pattern recognition
* Cognitive systems
* Developmental robotics
* Human-Robot Interaction

Faculty duties include teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels, research, and supervision of student research. Basic knowledge, or willingness to learn french language are required as part of the teaching will be in french. Candidates must have the ability to develop a leading research program with a focus on technology development and translation into concrete applications of autonomous robots and cognitive technical systems (e.g. service and assistance robots, humanoid robots, entertainment robots).

Remuneration will depend on the candidate experience. For more information and application : http://uei.ensta.fr/eng/positions.html

Inquiries about the scientific context of the position can be directed to David Filliat.

Deadline for application : september, 15th, 2010.

Links :
ParisTech : http://www.paristech.fr/en/
ENSTA ParisTech : http://www.ensta.fr/en/ Cognitive Robotics Laboratory : http://cogrob.ensta.fr

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Third Issue of the International Journal of Machine Consciousness Available

The third issue of the IJMC (volume 2, issue 1, June 2010) is now available online! This issue is centered around the target paper "An Alternative to Working on Machine Consciousness" written by Aaron Sloman, and commented by leading Machine Consciousness researchers (see Table of Contents below).

Sloman's paper abstract:

This paper extends three decades of work arguing that researchers who discuss consciousness should not restrict themselves only to (adult) human minds, but should study (and attempt to model) many kinds of minds, natural and artificial, thereby contributing to our understanding of the space containing all of them. We need to study what they do or can do, how they can do it, and how the natural ones can be emulated in synthetic minds. That requires: (a) understanding sets of requirements that are met by different sorts of minds, i.e. the niches that they occupy, (b) understanding the space of possible designs, and (c) understanding complex and varied relationships between requirements and designs. Attempts to model or explain any particular phenomenon, such as vision, emotion, learning, language use, or consciousness lead to muddle and confusion unless they are placed in that broader context. A methodology for making progress is summarised and a novel requirement proposed for a theory of how human minds work: the theory should support a single generic design for a learning, developing system that, in addition to meeting familiar requirements, should be capable of developing different and opposed philosophical viewpoints about consciousness, and the so-called hard problem. In other words, we need a common explanation for the mental machinations of mysterians, materialists, functionalists, identity theorists, and those who regard all such theories as attempting to answer incoherent questions. No designs proposed so far come close.

Additionally, the background paper 'Phenomenal and Access Consciousness and the "Hard" Problem: A View from the Designer Stance' by Sloman is freely available online.

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2 PhD + 1 postdoc position, KULeuven, "Bio-inspired distributed computing"

KULeuven, Belgium
Dept. Computer Science / Dept. Biology / Dept. Mechanics
Three open positions for computer scientists / biologists

Two PhD researchers
One postdoctoral researcher

In an interdisciplinary research project on

"Bio-inspired computing for coordination and control in large-scale and dynamic systems (BioCo3)"

Keywords

Multi-agent systems
Decentralized software engineering
Discrete optimization
Socio-biological systems
Biologically-inspired computing
Pickup-and-delivery problems

Project

"Biologically-inspired computing for coordination and control in large-scale and dynamic systems (BioCo3)"

This interdisciplinary project (involving computer science, biology, operations research and logistics expertise) studies decentralized approaches for controlling large-scale, dynamic systems - e.g. for controlling a large number of vehicles that need to accomplish transport tasks for clients (package delivery service). Achieving efficient and effective collective behavior is known to be quite a challenge, esp. if the systems are large in scale and submitted to changing operating conditions.

Complex collective behaviour occurs in many socio-biological systems. Social insects, e.g., are able to find the shortest path to food sources without any central control, or can build enormously complex nests with built-in ventilation systems, or divide the work such that the chances of survival are optimal.

Some socio-biological mechanisms for collective behavior have already been studied in the context of computing (e.g. stigmergy and digital pheromones, or in discrete optimization techniques, such as ant colony optimization, artificial immune systems, genetic algorithms). It becomes apparent, however, that (1) large-scale and dynamic systems still hold major challenges, and (2) many socio-biological concepts and techniques have been unexplored.

The project therefore aims to study advanced concepts and mechanisms, known from social biological systems, and their applicability in decentralized control systems. To guide the research, the project will use concrete application scenarios, based on decentralized control in pickup-and-delivery problems (PDPs).

The partners in this project are
Dept. of computer science, DistriNet labs Prof. Tom Holvoet http://distrinet.cs.kuleuven.be/ Dept. of biology, Laboratory of entomology Prof. Tom Wenseleers http://bio.kuleuven.be/ento/ Dept. of mechanics, Center for industrial management Dr. Paul Valckenaers http://www.mech.kuleuven.be/en/cib/
Saint-Lieven College, IT department
Dr. Greet Vanden Berghe
http://ingenieur.kahosl.be/personeel/greet.vandenberghe/

Requirements

For this ambitious project, two PhD positions and one position for a postdoctoral researcher are open. We invite applications from: either people who have a strong computer science background (master degree for PhD positions, PhD degree for the postdoc position) with a strong affinity and interest in biology, or people who have a strong a biological background (master degree for PhD positions, PhD degree for the postdoc position) and strong affinity and interest in computer science.
The positions are available from October 1, 2010 (negotiable). Further requirements for candidates include having a scientific, critical attitude being ambitious having good communication and social skills, team player having an independent working style being proficient in English experience as a researcher is welcome but not mandatory for the PhD positions.

For more information and for applying...

For more information about the project and the positions, and for applying for a position, contact the project coordinator:

Prof. Tom Holvoet
DistriNet Labs - Dept. of Computer Science, KULeuven, Belgium http://people.cs.kuleuven.be/Tom.Holvoet

For more information about the KULeuven:

http://www.kuleuven.be/

http://www.leuven.be/

The deadline for application is

July 15, 2010.

When applying, make sure to include (pdf versions of):

a detailed resume (with publications, if you have any) a motivational letter specifically referring to the open positions copies of marks and degrees/certificates a list of 3 references that we can contact your MSc thesis in English (or a 5-page summary in English).

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