Symposia

Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents

The proceedings of all symposia are now online at http://www.aisb.org.uk/publications/proceedings.shtml.

Second International Symposium on the Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Communication (EELC'05)

Chairs: Angelo Cangelosi (University of Plymouth, UK, Email: "acangelosi AT plymouth.ac.uk"), Chrystopher L. Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire, UK, Email: "C.L.Nehaniv AT herts.ac.uk")

The renewed scientific interest in the emergence and evolution of linguistic communication has become one of the most important research issues in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. The EELC'05 Symposium will focus on the latest empirical and modelling research on the evolutionary factors that affect the acquisition, self-organization and origins of linguistic communication systems and their precursors. This considers both language-specific abilities (e.g. speech, semantics and syntax) and other cognitive, sensorimotor and social abilities (e.g. category learning, action and embodiment, social networks).

Key questions relate to the the emergence of: symbol grounding; deixis, gesture, and reference; predication; negation; syntactic categories; and compositionality; among other issues in the context of embodied, social interaction and evolution.

This is a field characterized by a highly interdisciplinary and multi-methodological approach. It benefits from the contribution of researchers from wide ranging disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology and computer science. The methodologies adopted cover a wide range of approaches, from animal and human experiments, to brain studies and to computational and robotic modelling of linguistic behaviour. For example, computational models of language evolution and emergence involve artificial intelligence methods (e.g. artificial neural networks, evolutionary computation, rule-based systems) and techniques for the simulation of behaviour (artificial life, multi-agent systems, adaptive behaviour and robotics). The symposium will create the opportunity for the many of most influential in the field to present their latest research and to discuss the agenda for future studies.

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/EELC05.html

Agents that Want and Like: Motivational and Emotional Roots of Cognition and Action

Chair: Lola Cañamero (University of Hertfordshire, UK, Email: "L.Canamero AT herts.ac.uk")

Motivation and emotion are highly intertwined (e.g., emotions are often very powerful motivational factors; motivation can be seen as a consequence of emotion and viceversa, etc.) and it is not always easy to establish clear boundaries between them. Both types of phenomena are grouped under the broader category of "affect", traditionally distinguished from "cold" cognition. They lie at the heart of autonomy, adaptation, and social interaction in both biological and artificial agents. They also have a powerful and wide-ranging influence on many aspects of cognition and action. However, their roles are often considered to be complementary - as a first approximation, motivation would be concerned with the internal and external factors involved in the establishment of "goals" and the initiation and execution of goal-oriented action, whereas emotion is rather concerned, among other critical factors, with evaluative aspects of the relation between an agent and its environment.

This symposium proposes to investigate the roles and mutual interactions of motivation and emotion in influencing different aspects of cognition and action in biological and artificial agents that interact with their physical and social environment. The nature of this topic necessitates a highly multidisciplinary symposium, and we invite contributions from different relevant disciplines such as psychology, biology, neuroscience, ethology, sociology and philosophy, in addition to AI and robotics.

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqlc/emotivation_aisb05/

Third International Symposium on Imitation in Animals and Artifacts

Chair: Yiannis Demiris (Imperial College, UK, Email: "y.demiris AT imperial.ac.uk")

Within societies, an individual learns not only on its own, for example through classical conditioning and reinforcement, but to a large extent from other individuals, by observation and imitation. Species from rats to birds to humans have been observed to turn to their peers for efficient learning of useful knowledge. One of the most important mechanisms for the transmission of this knowledge is imitation. However, explaining the mechanisms underlying the imitative abilities of humans and other animals has proved to be a complex subject.

This interdisciplinary workshop will bring together researchers from neuroscience, brain imaging, animal psychology, computer science and robotics to examine the latest advances to imitation.

Areas of interest include but are not limited to:
- Imitation in Animals and Humans: studies and models, theories of underlying mechanisms.
- Robot Imitation: experiments, architectures, role of memory and prediction, learning sequences of actions and acquiring behaviours
- Neurobiological Foundations of Imitation
- Solving the Correspondence Problem between differently embodied systems
- Learning by Imitation to bootstrap the acquisition of skills & knowledge
- The Role of Imitation in the Development of Social Cognition
- Learning of Perception-Action Mappings via Observation of the Self or Others
- Developmental approaches to imitation
- Imitation, Intentionality and Communication
- Pathologies of imitation mechanisms; autism, visuoimitative apraxia.
- The interplay between Imitation, Attention, and Joint attention
- Programming by Example/Programming by Demonstration; Behavioural Cloning

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://www.iis.ee.ic.ac.uk/yiannis/imitation2005.html

Robotics, Mechatronics and Animatronics in the Creative and Entertainment Industries and Arts

Chair: Tony Hirst (Open University, UK, contact email: "aisb05 AT robofesta-uk.org")

Robotics, mechatronics and animatronics are playing increasingly prominent roles in the arts, creative enterprises and entertainment sectors - from theatre sets and film studios to contemporary kinetic sculpture and from advanced marketing displays to theme parks.

This symposium seeks to bring together academic researchers, industry representatives and arts practitioners to explore the expressive potential of 'creative robotics' technologies in both small works and in the wider context of the creative and entertainment industries. In particular, the symposium will provide an opportunity for robotics researchers to describe creative applications of their research effort as well as discussing technical issues and approaches that are relevant to the use of robotics in the creative industries and entertainment sectors.

Relevant Topics include, but are not limited to:
- advanced Animatronics for Television, Art Galleries, Theatres, Amusement Parks and Museums
- state-of-the-art presentation robots
- Cybernetic art/robots as artwork
- robot music
- artwork creating robots/robot painting
- educational robots
- human robot interaction
- robot tour guides
- public engagement with robotics and engineering, mechatronics and animatronics
- public robot competitions
- public demonstrations of simulated intelligent behaviour

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://crrn.open.ac.uk/aisb

Robot Companions: Hard Problems and Open Challenges in Robot-Human Interaction

Chairs: Kerstin Dautenhahn (University of Hertfordshire, UK, Email: "K.Dautenhahn AT herts.ac.uk"), René te Boekhorst (University of Hertfordshire, UK, Email: "R.teBoekhorst AT herts.ac.uk")

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is a growing and increasingly popular research area at the intersection of research field such as robotics, psychology, ethology and cognitive science. Robots moving out of laboratory and manufacturing environments face hard problems of perception, action and cognition. Application areas that heavily involve human contact are a particularly challenging domain. Interaction and communication of embodied physical robots with humans is multi-modal, and involves deep issues of social intelligence and interaction that have traditionally been studied e.g. in psychology. The design of a robot's behaviour, appearance, and cognitive and social skills is highly challenging, and requires interdisciplinary collaborations across the traditional boundaries of established disciplines. It addresses deep issues into the nature of human social intelligence, as well as sensitive ethical issues in domains where robots are interacting with vulnerable people (e.g. children, elderly, people with special needs).

Assuming that the future will indeed give us a variety of different robots that inhabit our homes, it is at present not quite clear what roles the robots will adopt. Will they be effective machines performing tasks on our behalf, assistants, companions, or even friends? What social skills are desirable and necessary for such robots? The development of robots designed to interact with people requires a careful analysis and study of how people interact with robots and what roles a new generation of robot companions should adopt. The symposium will present state-of-the-art HRI research, focusing on hard problems and open challenges involved in studying 'robot companions'.

Topics relevant to the symposium are:
- Design of social robots for HRI research
- Requirement for socially interactive robots for HRI research
- Cognitive skills for robot companions
- Evaluation methods in HRI research
- Ethical issues in HRI research
- Creating relationships with social robots
- Roles of robots in the home
- Developmental aspects of human-robot interaction
- others

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqkd/HRI-AISB05.html

Conversational Informatics for Supporting Social Intelligence and Interaction - Situational and Environmental Information Enforcing Involvement in Conversation

Chairs: Yukiko Nakano (RISTEX-JST, Japan, Email:"yukiko AT ristex.jst.go.jp"), Toyoaki Nishida (Kyoto University, Japan, Email: "nishida AT i.kyoto-u.ac.jp")

Social intelligence is the ability to understand other social actors/agents and interact effectively with them. As social intelligence emerges through communication, communication ability is essential for accomplishing Social Intelligence and studying conversational exchanges as a social activity contributes to understanding Social Intelligence.

As a technology supporting Social Intelligence, this symposium discusses "Conversational Informatics": studies on human conversational behaviors as well as design/implementation of artifacts based on the analysis of human conversations. For example, designing Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) based on a model of human communication behaviors is one of the main research approaches in Conversational Informatics. However, in previous ECAs, little has been studied on ECA's capability of engagement, such as eliciting users' spontaneous contribution to a conversation and initiation of it, and maintaining the conversation to accomplish a long interaction.

As essential aspects of communication that Conversational Informatics should support, this symposium focuses on "involvement" in a conversation and "situational information that makes conversants involved in a conversation". If conversational participants are not really involved in a conversation, information is not smoothly exchanged between them. In such a case, Social Intelligence does not emerge. Moreover, to make the conversation participants involved in a conversation, situational information is indispensable because communication is deeply linked and embedded in a situation.

Based on the motivation above, this symposium addresses issues on:
- identifying situational factors enforcing conversational involvement in human face-to-face communication, and investigating how conversational involvement contributes to accomplishing Social Intelligence.
- applying findings of an analysis of face-to-face communication to enhance artifacts' ability of conversational involvement, specifically by recognizing/generating situational information, and facilitating Social Intelligence through human-agent interaction.
- developing technologies for creating a good amount of conversational contents by automatically analyzing situated conversations, and improving robustness of conversational systems using the rich real world contents.

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://kaiwa.ristex.jst.go.jp/AISB_CI/

Next Generation approaches to Machine Consciousness: Imagination, Development, Intersubjectivity, and Embodiment

Chairs: Ron Chrisley (COGS, UK, Email: "ronc AT cogs.susx.ac.uk"), Rob Clowes (COGS, UK, Email: "robertc AT cogs.susx.ac.uk"), Steve Torrance (Middlesex University and Sussex University, UK, Email: "stevet AT sussex.ac.uk").

Machine Consciousness (MC) concerns itself with the study and creation of artefacts which have mental characteristics typically associated with consciousness such as (self-) awareness, emotion, affect, phenomenal states, imagination, etc. Recently, developments in AI and robotics, especially through the prisms of behavioural and epigenetic robotics, have stressed the embodied, interactive and developmental nature of intelligent agents which are now regarded by many as essential to engineering human-level intelligence. Some recent work has suggested that giving robots imaginative or simulation capabilities might be a big step towards achieving MC. Other studies have emphasized 'second person' issues such as intersubjectivity and empathy as a substrate for human consciousness. Alongside this, the infant-caregiver relationship has been recognised as essential to the development of consciousness in its specifically human form. Until now, most have considered these issues as, at best, tangential to the creation of artificial consciousness. This symposium proposes to bring them into greater focus and explore the contribution such work might make to next generation approaches to MC.

It is expected that contributions will integrate one or more of the following themes into the study of MC:
- Imagination
- Development
- Enactive Approaches
- Heterophenomenology
- Synthetic Phenomenology
- Intersubjectivity
- Ethics
- General aspects (techniques, theories, constraints)

Preference will be given to work that is:
- Relevant: closely related to the themes of the symposium
- Implemented: based on working robotic or other implemented systems
- Novel: not previously presented elsewhere

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cogs/mc

Normative Multi-Agent Systems

Chairs: Guido Boella (University of Torino, Italy), Leon van der Torre (CWI Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Harko Verhagen (Corresponding Chair, Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Sweden, Email: "verhagen AT dsv.su.se")

Norms are essential for artificial agents that are to display behaviour comparable to human intelligent behaviour or collaborate with humans, because the use of norms is the key of human social intelligence. Norms play a central role in many social phenomena such as coordination, cooperation, decision-making, etc. There is an increasing interest in the role of norms in societies, both inside as outside the agent community. Now the time is ripe for a symposium focussing on this central sociological concept given that the field of (multi)agent research is moving more and more from the individual, cognitive focussed agent models to models of socially situated agents. NorMAS therefore focuses on normative multiagent systems.

Normative multiagent systems combine theories and frameworks for normative systems with multiagent systems. Thus, these systems provide a promising model for human and artificial agent co-ordination, because they integrate norms and individual intelligence. They are a prime example of the use of sociological theories in multiagent systems, and therefore of the relation between agent theory and the social sciences, e.g., sociology, philosophy, economics, legal science, etc.

The topics of this symposium include, but are not restricted to, the following issues:
- Balancing dynamics and statics at the agent (micro) and agent society (macro) level
- Coordination based on normative multiagent systems
- Emergence of conventions, norms, roles, and normative multiagent systems
- Combining conventions with regulative, permissive, constitutive and other types of norms
- Relation between NorMAS and contracts, security, and (electronic) institutions
- Alternatives to and extensions of the homo economicus and BDI logics
- Extending logical frameworks to encompass norms in agent decision making
- How to implement theories of norms in artificial agents
- Multiagent social simulation models containing norms
- Mixing artificial and human agents in hybrid social systems

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://normas.di.unito.it/aisb05

Socially Inspired Computing Joint Symposium

This special Joint Symposium has the following themes:
- Memetic theory in artificial systems & societies
- Emerging Artificial Societies
- Engineering with Social Metaphors

Theme 1: Memetic Theory in Artificial Systems & Societies

Chairs: Natalio Krasnogor (University of Nottingham, UK, Email: "Natalio.Krasnogor AT Nottingham.ac.uk"), Steven Gustafson (University of Nottingham, UK, Email: "smg AT cs.nott.ac.uk")

Memetic Theory and Artificial Societies (METAS) is the first edition of a series of international symposia dedicated to qualitative and quantitative aspects of memetic research as applied to artificial (and natural) systems and societies. Since Dawkins inception in 1976 of the "meme" concept, we have witnessed enormous advances in computational and communication technologies, not least the creation and popularisation of the Internet. These computational and communication advances allow researchers to simulate large and complex systems of interactive agents in scales not dreamt-of a short time ago. At the same time, these same resources represent sophisticated evolving computational substrates in which artificial societies (could) exist and where the science of memetics could be tested, developed and exploited.

This symposium will bring together researcher working at the cutting-edge of memetic theory as applied to artificial systems and societies. METAS aim is to promote multidisciplinary studies and promote the best science on memetics.

Some (but not all) of the themes covered by METAS are:
- Fundamental concepts on memetics and theoretical frameworks for Memetics,
- Memetics as an evolutionary model of information transmission Qualitative and Quantitative issues of memetics in artificial and natural societies,
- Computer simulations of memetics systems and dynamics,
- The memetics nature of information processing in networks (in general) and the Internet (in particular),
- Memetics simulations in economy, marketing, policy-making, conflict resolution, game playing, and
- Memetics in artificial and natural problem solving, software engineering and multi-agent systems.

The papers collected in the symposium will be extended and fully reviewed and will be published after the symposium in a book (preliminary agreement with the Natural Computation Series in Springer). The symposium will consist of 2 plenary talks, paper presentations, and concluding with a round-panel discussion.

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~smg/metas/

Theme 2: Emerging Artificial Societies

Chair: Nigel Gilbert (University of Surrey, UK, Email: "n.gilbert@soc.surrey.ac.uk")

Human societies are self-organising and probably emerged in parallel with the evolution of language and development of cultural artefacts. This symposium will take as its topics:
- current research about the processes and preconditions for the emergence of human societies;
- experiments on artificial (i.e. computational) societies designed to shed light on generic processes of the emergence of societies;
- the application of anthropological and sociological knowledge to the design of emergent societies of artificial agents
- research on self-organising societies of embedded computational agents
- architectures for computational agents capable of inhabiting such societies

By 'society', we mean here a collection of interacting (human or computational) agents that share an external symbolic system (e.g. a 'language' and cultural symbols) and which possesses social structure (e.g. normatively enforced and shared rules of behaviour). Thus, contributions which consider for example the evolution of language; the development and imposition of norms; the emergence of patterned activity and their recognition by agents; and the design of socially responsive agents will be welcomed.

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE:: http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/newties/emerging-art-soc.html

Theme 3: Socially Inspired Computing - Engineering with Social Metaphors

Chairs: David Hales (The University of Bologna, Italy, Email: "dave AT davidhales.com"), Bruce Edmonds (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, Email: "bruce AT cfpm.org")

Ideas from biology have been successfully applied to the design, construction and adjustment of computer systems. This workshop aims to focus on work which contributes to doing the same with ideas and metaphors originating in social phenomena. Social systems are complex self-organising and self-regulating systems that emerge certain kinds of properties that would appear to be very useful if they could be instantiated in computer systems. For example, the emergence and maintenance of roles, institutions, power-relations, exchange and trust systems are very much current engineering issues in distributed (network based) decentralised systems. Recently, the emerging discipline of computational social science has begun to formalise concepts about social mechanisms algorithmically - i.e. using (often agent-based) computer simulation. It would appear that there is a great potential for cross fertilisation between researchers trying to solve difficult engineering problems and those producing computational models of complex social phenomena. Key questions for the workshop include: How and to what extent are socially-inspired mechanisms effective in the context of the computational system?; Can reliable systems be obtained using socially-inspired mechanisms?; How can the emergence that is endemic in such systems be controlled and utilised?; What methods can be utilised in order that one may obtain desirable software systems?. What sort of problems are amenable to this approach? We hope these will be answered, not in a theoretical way, but rather in a practical way via demonstrations of simulations and software. Negative as well as positive results are welcomed.

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://cfpm.org/sic

Virtual Social Agents Joint Symposium

This special Joint Symposium has the following themes:
- Social presence cues for virtual humanoids
- Empathic Interaction with Synthetic Characters
- Mind-minding Agents

Theme 1: Social Presence Cues for Virtual Humanoids

Chairs: Peter Wallis, (Corresponding Chair, The University of Melbourne, Australia, Email: "pwallis AT acm.org"), Catherine Pelachaud (University de Paris 8, France)

Embodied Conversational Agents, or ECAs, have been developed for a wide range of applications. One of the most often reported difficulties is to maintain the user's attention and interest. Most of the studies report that interaction with ECAs does not last more than a few turns. To overcome this short interaction pattern, a popular approach is to make ECA more human-like, but recent work suggests that some aspects of human behaviour are more important than others. The theme to be explored in this workshop is that the important aspects are those that make an agent appear to have social intelligence. The social intelligence hypothesis is that intelligence as we know it is a result of evolution in an environment where cooperation is key to survival. Animals that live in same species groups, including humans, develop protocols for dealing with intra group pressures. These protocols require the presentation and recognition of cues that express social relations and any agent, human or virtual, that is to operate in a social context must be able to work with these cues. A key question is what protocols and techniques have evolved in human society, and what must an Embodied Conversational Agent do to be a recognisably social being?

These issues have been studied before in various disciplines. Reeves and Nass show how humans are sensitive to the medium of a message, not just the message content, and Brown and Levinson use the concept of 'face' to model politeness. The aim of this workshop is to draw this work together by showing how it is applied it to the creation of ECA's. Multi disciplinary and multi paradigm contributions are welcome. Authors are not necessarily expected to have implemented a system, but the consequences of their paper should be apparent to those who wish to create embodied conversational agents that act in a social world.

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://www.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~pelachaud/AISB05

Theme 2: Empathy Interaction with Synthetic Characters

Chairs: Lynne Hall (University of Sunderland, UK, Email: "lynne.hall AT sunderland"), Sarah Woods (University of Hertfordshire, UK, Email: "s.n.woods AT herts.ac.uk")

Humans, when interacting with synthetic characters, both agent and robotic, can feel empathy, and experience a diverse set of emotional reactions. Research suggests that synthetic characters have particular relevance to domains with flexible and emergent tasks where empathy is crucial to the goals of the system. This symposium aims to explore how empathy can be represented and evoked by synthetic characters and how empathic interactions can be measured and evaluated. Using empathic interaction maintains and builds user emotional involvement to create a coherent cognitive and emotional experience. This results in the development of empathic relations between the user and the synthetic character, meaning that the user perceives and models the emotion of the character experiencing an appropriate emotion as a consequence. In considering empathy and synthetic characters, we will be considering both the empathy on the side of the character and empathy felt by the user. We aim to consider behaviours and features that can allow the user to build an empathic relation with a synthetic character and to consider issues related to appearance, situation, and behaviour that may trigger empathy in the user.

The main themes to be explored include theories / models of empathy for empathic interaction, embodiment, behaviour and empathy, autonomy and empathy, interactive narrative and empathy creation, and measuring and evaluating empathic interactions. Achieving empathy in human synthetic character interactions relies on a broad and diverse array of technologies, perspectives, and people and the interconnections between them. The main goal of the symposium is to bring together researchers in empathic interaction with synthetic characters to gain an awareness of the current status of an area of increasing research activity. Selected papers and results of this workshop will be submitted for publication in an edited book.

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://www.nicve.salford.ac.uk/agents/AISB05/AISB05Home

Theme 3: Mind-Minding Agents

Chairs: Dirk Heylen (University of Twente, the Netherlands, Email: "heylen AT ewi.utwente.nl"), Stacy Marsella (ISI, USA, Email: "marsella AT isi.edu")

Social agents interacting with one another can only function properly if their choice of action is guided by an understanding of the mental state of the agents they interact with and of the effect their actions have on that mental state. Further, for all their actions, not just the conversational ones, they should take into account how they believe the other will react. Appropriately designed agents that have to coordinate their actions or negotiate with one another should therefore be equipped with some kind of model of what the other believes and feels as well as knowledge of the potential of actions to change such mental states, in other words: a theory of mind (ToM). This holds in particular for (embodied) conversational agents. The symposium "Mind-Minding Agents" is concerned with models of the social interaction of agents that build on the idea of a theory of mind. Agent-based modeling of human social behavior is an increasingly important research area but theory of mind has too often been ignored in computational models of social interaction.

Contributions from all relevant disciplines are invited: psychology, social theory, linguistics, multi-agent systems, et cetera. Contributions could be about fundamental theories, computational models, experiments and applications.

For more details see the SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE: http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/conference/MindingMinds