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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Postdoc position in San Diego 

Positions are currently open for Postdoctoral Fellows in computational neuroscience to join a team of researchers in creating large-scale, spiking network models of sensorimotor control in the mammalian central nervous system. Building on two decades of experience at The Neurosciences Institute, these simulations will be incorporated into autonomous Brain-Based Devices that perform various behavioral tasks.

A suitable candidate should have a background in neurobiology, neural modeling experience, and strong programming skills.

Located in La Jolla, California, The Neurosciences Institute focuses its theoretical and experimental research on the principles underlying how we perceive and act upon the world, how we learn and remember, and how consciousness arises.

http://www.nsi.edu/ 

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CRUBOTS

Conscious-Robots.com Utilities for Robot Simulation

CRUBOTS is a set of Robotics Developer Studio (MRDS) services developed as part of a research program in Machine Consciousness. Although these services were developed originally to work with the CERA-CRANIUM cognitive architecture, they can be reused in any robotics project.

As we work primarily with a Pioneer 3DX robot, most of the simulation services have been designed to be a reproduction of the real robotic mobile base.

CRUBOTS is distributed as a ZIP file containing the source code for all MRDS services. Each service code in enclosed in its own folder under packages/crubots in MRDS home directory.

See below for specific instructions and a description of the services included in CRUBOTS.

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Simulated Pioneer GPS Service

The Simulated Pioneer GPS service provides a simple localization service to be used in the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio simulator. It consists in a simple box shape entity (PioneerGPSEntity) that can be attached to a simulated robot, and a service (SimulatedPioneerGPS) that provides notifications indicating updated X, Y, Z coordinates of the robot in the simulated world.

 This service is based on the Simulated GPS service that comes with MRDS 2008 R2.

Service Download

 Simulated Pioneer GPS source code for MRDS 2008 R2 is available here.

Installation Instructions

Download the ZIP file to your MRDS home directory, When you unzip the file, it creates one project in the
packages\crubots\simulation\sensors directory under your MSRS installation:

The folder SimulatedPioneerGPS will contain the source code.

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

 SimulatedPioneerGPS\SimulatedPioneerGPS.sln

*** IMPORTANT NOTE: ***

In order to have the project references working for your particular settings,
you will need to run DssProjectMigration.exe. For instance (from the MRDS
command prompt):

 bin\DssProjectMigration.exe packages\crubots\simulation\sensors\SimulatedPioneerGPS

See Readme.txt file for more details. Use the MRDS forum if you have any question about this service.

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