Fifth Meeting of Mind RACES: State of the Art

1. Fifth Meeting of Mind RACES:State of the Art Rino Falcone - Project Coordinator Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies National Research Council of Italy Project Meeting Wuerzburg, Germany April 20-21, 2006

2. Outline 1) Analysis of the Review Report: Problems and Potential Actions 2) Goals and Programme of the Meeting

3. Review Report: Resume • The conclusion of this review is globally positive and all the documents delivered are accepted • Recommendations: • 1) Concrete actions to solve the resources problems! • 2) Coordination ISTC-IST for reinforcing the link between emotion and anticipation (integration of this research in the Project) • 3) Efforts on integration (all the partners) • 4) Reinforcing existing collaborations (all the partners) • 5) AIBO problems (IST, NBU?, OFAI?)

4. Canamero’s Review: Positive definition of scenarios to develop and test (integrated) architectures for anticipatory systems 1) Good work of theoretical nature overview of state-of-the-art systems 2) Identification of challenges and integration dimensions systematic investigation of integration possibilities Largely unaddressed • Potential: • First year achievements are totally relevant to the project • Emphasis on dissemination to have a significant impact in the scientific community • Suggested Action: • 1) Adopt a more top-down approachto integration guided by scientific problems • 2) Define a small subset of issues to address • 3) Promote more joint publicationsand dissemination activities

5. Canamero’s Review: Negative massive reduction in staff effort with respect to the plans 1) Understaffing problem In particular, integration between the “high-level” approach taken by ISTC and the “low-level” approach proposed by IST in WP5 2) Problems in the Partners Interactions In general, among all the partners Suggested Action: 1) The situation of massively understaffed has to be immediately amended 2) Short working visits among 2 or 3 partners should be promoted

6. Canamero’s Review: wps(1) ++WP1: Project management - Good organization and documentation of activities. ++WP2: Scenarios specification and evaluation - Good interaction and discussions. Initial implementation of the three selected scenarios is also underway. +-WP3: Attention, monitoring and control - …The partners have also identified relevant types of mechanisms to be implemented within the project and carried some initial implementation, although it is not clear whether / to what extent integration issues have been considered in doing this, or whether such implementations were rather intended as proof-of-concepts of what different partners could do.

7. Canamero’s Review: wps (2) +-WP4: Goal-directed behaviour, pro-activity and analogy - Potential overlap with WP3? +-WP5: Anticipatory emotions - This WP has been very seriously understaffed for this period, particularly IST (lead contractor) and to a lesser extent ISTC; one is also left with the impression that there has not been much collaboration between these two groups. These issues are however challenging and crucial, andneed to be properly addressed at this point. +-WP6: Integration - Work on integration has been for the most part theoretical in this stage. +-WP7: Dissemination - Not always clear whether publications are a direct result of the project or the outcome of daily work in related topics.

8. Kumar’s Review: positive Creating scenarios that will serve as a testbed for theories of anticipation as well as for experimenting and evaluating the integration of various models 1) Excellent work developed so far Basis to create a common taxonomy for the discussion and advancement of theories on anticipation 2) Identification of possible synergies among various participants Participants have also clearly identified an integration plan that will bring this multidisciplinary effort together Potential: This group, more than any, has positioned itself to be a leader in this area and has the potential to do some ground breaking work. I see resemblance in this endeavor to the seminal work of the Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) Group that brought new life into the research on neural networks in the 1980’s. Suggested Action: 1) the scenarios should be widely publicized and made available to the wider research community 2) There is a need for closer collaboration among many institutions 3) to identify a small subset of tasks that can be accomplished in the remainder of the project.

9. Directions of our work 1) Increasing interactions. In particular, in the directions underlined by the reviewers (emotion and anticipation; BUT also all the partners’ activities) 2) Promote more joint publications and dissemination activities. We are trying with Springer (LNCS), but we could also try with AI Magazine (as suggested by the reviewers). We have now the reviewers comments to attach to the request. • 3) To identify a small subset of tasks that can be accomplished in the remainder of the project. This does not mean we should cut the other activities. We have to focus on a subset • Tomorrow discussion! 4) Possible Top-down issues: a) to identify the SURPRISE model at the different levels and in the different mechanisms under analysis. Examples: 1) priming and surprise (for NBU; when and how can be considered surprising a schema activation?) 2) Attention and surprise (LUCS) 3) Match between pre-simulation and evaluation of the reality (what and how can be considered the presence of surprise?) 4) cognitive model of surprise (ISTC) 5) Expression of surprise (IST), and so on. b) any suggestions?

10. Goals for this meeting TODAY • Each partner illustrates the progresses in the scenario implementation and test. Please highlight: • comparison with others mechanisms and with reactive systems • possible integrations with others • REMEMBER: D6.2 @ October 2007 --> (a) preliminary implementation of integrated architectures (b) results of the preliminary tests of the integrated architectures. TOMORROW • Define a list of the (few but realistic) integrations to be done • What is the scientific challenge? • Timing? • Define a tentative schedule for collaborations/short meetings or exchange of researchers finalised to integration or joint publications • Other problems to address: • Understaffing in WP5 • AIBO?

11. Programme • SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION • 9:00 - 9:15: “Welcome, introduction, and meeting organization” • 9:15 -9:45: "MindRACES project, state of the art” R.Falcone, ISTC-CNR” • 9:45-10:30: ”Anticipatory Behavioral Control: Wuerzburg research • activities" J. Hoffmann, UW • SECTION 2: Metrics, Problem Types, and Anticipatory Processes Within • 11.00-11.30: “Deliverable on metrics description and evaluation plan”, • NBU • 11.30-12.00: “Discussion on metrics, relation to problems and • anticipatory processes…. What do we want to show?” - • Round Table Discussion • 12:00-12:30: G. Pezzulo, ISTC-CNR • SECTION 3a: Group PROGRESS • 14:00-14:25: C. Martinho, IST • 14:25-14:50: M. Piunti, ISTC-CNR • 14:50-15:15: D. Ognibene, ISTC-CNR • 15:15-15.40: C. Balkenius, LUCS • SECTION 3b: Group PROGRESS • 16:00-16:50: “Associative robot arm control mechanisms and local • adaptive predictive tracking” O. Herbort & M. Butz, UW • 16.50-17.15: D. Wierstra and A. Gloye, IDSIA • 17.15-17.45: P. Poelz - J. Rattenberger, OFAI • Friday April 21st • SECTION 4: FUTURE ACTIONS & Collaboration Plans • 9.00-10.30: “Analysis and proposals on future actions, collaboration, selection and integration” • SECTION 5: Group Interactions 11.00-13.30: “Group Work and Interactions” Round table • 14.30 – 15.00: Final Discussions and Conclusions