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.

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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:

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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: ***

News from the MRDS Blog (by Trevor Taylor): 

New tool and tutorials for learning about Robotics Developer Studio 

Young Joon Kim in Korea maintains a web site about Robotics Developer Studio called HelloApps. He has recently added the topics below:

- C# interface programming with SPL
- Java interface programming with SPL
- Python interface programming with SPL
- LabView interface programming with VPL and SPL
- MATLAB interface programming with VPL
- Flash interface programming with VPL and SPL
- VPL UI programming
- And a lot of robotics and creativity course samples

Note that SPL (Simulation Programming Language) is Young Joon's own development environment for RDS. SPL adds a scripting layer to the RDS Simulator. Although it is based around simulation, the principles apply to real-world robotics as well.

There is a lot of great material on the web site, especially if you are just learning how to use RDS or if you might want to teach a class using RDS. You can download both RDS and SPL for free, which makes learning basic robotics very low cost.

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PhD Scholarship in Cognitive Science (Spain)

Announcement is only available in Spanish:

ANÁLISIS CORPOREIZADO DE LAS NOCIONES DE COMPUTACIÓN, ALGORITMO E IMPLEMENTACIÓN Y DE LA INDUCCIÓN DE ESTRUCTURAS GRAMATICALES.

OFERTA DE BECA FPI
 
Se oferta una Beca Predoctoral de Formación de Investigadores (FPI) para la realización de una Tesis Doctoral en Ciencia Cognitiva asociada al Proyecto FFI2009-13416-C02-01 (subprograma FISO) (ANÁLISIS CORPOREIZADO DE LAS NOCIONES DE COMPUTACIÓN, ALGORITMO E IMPLEMENTACIÓN Y DE LA INDUCCIÓN DE ESTRUCTURAS GRAMATICALES).
 
Investigador Principal: Dr. Paco Calvo Garzón
 
Duración: 4 años (2010-2013)
 
Actividades relacionadas con el proyecto:

1. Análisis de los conceptos de computación, algoritmo e implementación en el post-cognitivismo.
2. Estudio de la ‘cognición mínima’ en clave de percepción-acción.
3. Modelización del aprendizaje de reglas en la adquisición del lenguaje.
 
Perfil: Esta oferta está dirigida a licenciados en Filosofía, Psicología, Filología, Informática, y demás disciplinas directamente relacionadas con la Ciencia Cognitiva en su dimensión de análisis conceptual y de modelización con redes neuronales artificiales.
Se considera condición imprescindible poseer un conocimiento de inglés suficiente como para investigar en dicha lengua y tener disponibilidad para realizar estancias breves de formación en el extranjero.
 
Contacto: Interesados enviar copia de certificación académica personal y cv por correo electrónico a Paco Calvo Garzón (fjcalvo at-sign um dot es) antes del próximo miércoles, 17 de febrero de 2010.
 
Centro de Aplicación: Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad de Murcia (Área de Lógica y Filosofía de la Ciencia).
 
Más información en: micinn.es

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How to Make a Robot that Feels

This article is divided in two parts:

- A summary of Kevin O’Regan keynote talk at CogSys 2010 by Raúl Arrabales.
- An invited extended discussion about the self and the role of action in sensation by Kevin O’Regan.

How to Make a Robot that Feels

“How to make a robot that feels” was the title of the keynote talk given by Kevin O’Regan at the CogSys 2010 conference last week. During this talk O’Regan introduced the so-called hard problem of consciousness (as coined by Chalmers) and explained his sensorimotor approach to (phenomenal) consciousness [1]. This talk and related ideas are of special interest for Machine Consciousness researchers since O’Regan offers an account for sensory feel which virtually eliminates the hard problem, and therefore the explanatory gap itself. In the following I will try to summarize the key ideas that I got from both the talk and further discussions we had with O’Regan during the CogSys conference.

Using the redness of red, quite typical example in philosophy of mind, O’Regan addressed the problem of designing a robot that feels. Note that in this context the word feel is not used as in Damasio’s work, but to refer to the what-is-it-like or qualia associated to conscious contents, i.e. sensory feel.

[Use the "Read more..." button below to see the rest of the article]

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