A PhD position is available in the research group of Aldo Faisal at Imperial College.

Group page: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/a.faisal

Dr Faisal is a Lecturer in Neurotechnology jointly at the Dept. of Bioengineering and the Dept. of Computing at Imperial College London. The Faisal Lab combines cross-disciplinary computational and experimental approaches to investigate how the brain and its neural circuits make decisions, learns and controls movements.

Note from the site:

Open PhD position in Computational Neuroscience of Sensorimotor learning (Theory + Experiments).

We are currently looking for an exceptional and intellectually curious PhD candidate for a position we have available.  The ideal candidate would have an interest in combining experiments with theory in their research. Prior knowledge of neuroscience is not essential, but a desire to learn is. The academic background can range from biology to physics. Programming skills are welcome, mathematical aptitude essential. 
Interested? Contact us via email with a CV and a brief statement of your interest to conduct research in this area of neuroscience: aldo X faisal Y imperial X ac X uk  , where X = “dot” and Y= “at”.

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (112) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 1867

Tutorial on AI and Machine Consciousness at AAAI Conference by Antonio Chella.

July 11 2010. Atlanta. Twenty-Fourth Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-10).

Tutorial SA-1. AI and Machine Consciousness

By Antonio Chella.

Machine consciousness is an emerging field that addresses the problems of designing and implementing computational models of consciousness in an agent. The target of machine consciousness research is twofold: the possibility of building phenomenally conscious machines (that is, facing the hard problem of qualia) and the analysis of the active role of consciousness in controlling and planning the behaviour of an agent.

Machine consciousness is placed at the crossing between technical disciplines (AI, robotics, computer science and engineering), theoretical disciplines (philosophy of mind, linguistics, logic), and empirical disciplines (psychology and neuroscience). It focuses on attempts to apply the methods of AI, robotics and computer science to understand consciousness and to examine the possible role of consciousness in AI systems. On the one hand there is the hope that facing the problem of consciousness would be a decisive move to design better AI systems; on the other hand the implementations of AI systems could be helpful for understanding natural consciousness.

The tutorial will present the current state of research in machine consciousness and it will discuss the theoretical foundations and the experimental results of the field and their importance for the AI community.

The tutorial will be divided in four parts: i) theoretical and philosophical issues of consciousness, ii) models of machine consciousness, iii) case studies and implemented systems, and iv) discussions and perspectives of machine consciousness.

Prerequisite knowledge: No specific prior knowledge is required.

Antonio Chella is a professor of robotics in the Computer Engineering Department of the University of Palermo, Italy, where he leads the robotics laboratory. He is an associate editor of the Artificial Intelligence Journal. In 2007 he organized and cochaired the AAAI Fall Symposium on AI and Consciousness. He is cofounder and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Machine Consciousness started in 2009. His recent research interests address the implementation of machine consciousness models in autonomous robots.

More information: AAAI-10 Tutorial Forum page.

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (270) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 1597

Postdoctoral opening in computational neuroscience/mathematical biology

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (147) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 2018

Pentti Haikonen Doctoral Thesis - Part III (Simulations and Conclusions) available for download

Pentti Haikonen is one of the most salient researchers on Machine Consciousness. His PhD Thesis entitled:

"An Artificial Cognitive Neural System Based on a Novel Neuron Structure and a Reentrant Modular Architecture with Implications to Machine Consciousness"

is one of the first doctoral dissertations in the field of Machine Consciousness. In this thesis, Haikonen introduces the Haikonen Associative Neurons and his Cognitive Architecture.

Part III of Haikonen's thesis is available here:

Haikonen, Pentti O. A., An Artificial Cognitive Neural System Based on a Novel Neuron Structure and a Reentrant Modular Architecture with Implications to Machine Consciousness. Helsinki University of Technology, Applied Electronics Laboratory, Series B: Research Reports, Espoo 1999, 156 pp. ISBN 951-22-4730-5, ISSN 1456-1174.

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (183) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 1535

AND Corporation has developed and commercialized a process known as Holographic Neural Technology.

AND Corporation has developed a rather complete neuro-morphic model of the brain, based upon Holographic/Quantum neural technology ("H.Ne.T.").  They have been distributing these systems for some years now. Details are avaikable at http://www.andcorporation.com/.

John Sutherland from AND Corporation describes the relationship between H.Ne.T. technology and consciousness as follows:

Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (174) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 1328

Logitech Webcam Pan Tilt Service (PanTiltCam Service)

The CRUBOTS Pan Tilt Service for Logitech webcams (PanTiltCam service) is a component to be used with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio to control the pan and tilt functions of a Logitech webcam like the Logitech Quickcam Sphere MP (also kown as Quickcam Orbit MP).

This service is based on the Logitech Orbit/Sphere Mover DLL Library and permits to control the pan and tilt motors of the Logitech webcam from MRDS 2008 services using C# or any other .NET programming language.

Service Source Code Download

Pan Tilt Cam service source code is available at: MRDS 2008 R2 Download section.

Service Details and Instructions

To illustrate how the service works I've added Pan Tilt control buttons to the CRANIUM Dashboard service included in CRUBOTS. As far as I know there is no simulated web cam that supports pan-tilt functions, therefore it can only be used with a real Logitech cam.

The CRANIUM Dashboard service is able to subscribe to a generic Pan Tilt Service, and expose the functionality of such a service in the form of Up, Down, Left, Right buttons. Every time you press these buttons the corresponding commands are sent to the Pan Tilt services you connected to.

The distribution ZIP file actually contains two services:

 - GenericPanTilt Service: The Generic Pan Tilt Service is a Robotics Developer Studio generic service for Pan Tilt actuators. In other words, this generic service defines the behavior (operations) that any pan tilt controller will support. This service is the one you should reference from your control code if you want it to be hardware independent.

 - PanTiltCam Service: The Pan Tilt Cam Service is an implementation of the Generic Pan Tilt Service which can control Logitech pan tilt cameras. It uses the Logimove dll library to communicate with the Logitech driver.

Download the ZIP file to your MRDS home directory, when you unzip the file, it creates two directory projects in the packages\crubots\Actuators directory under your RDS installation:

The folder GenericPanTilt contains the source code of the generic service, and the folder PanTiltCam contains the Logitech pan tilt service.

If you want to compile the projects yourself, then open the project and do a rebuild (see the note below first!)

*** IMPORTANT NOTE: ***