ShanghAI Lectures 2009 – Robohub

ShanghAI Lectures: Xiao’an Li “Action Skill Developmental Learning for Autonomous Soccer Robots”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 16:08:56 +0000

Robocub 2013 in Eindhoven.

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-17

In the past decade, soccer robots have been developed greatly, and some of the robot soccer games have been showing more and more attractions. However, many open problems such as how to train soccer robots in the real world, and how the soccer robots learn the action skills incrementally or communicatively have been challenging us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nygqkdknA-I

In this talk, we will firstly introduce the motivations for our research. Then, some prospective approaches related with developmental learning of autonomous robots will be discussed. Also, we will propose some ideas and show some practical work for action skill developmental learning in autonomous mobile robots. At last, we will point out the potential advantages of developmental learning and the further research directions.

Xiaoan Li received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Information Engineering in 1987, Control Theory and Application in 1990, and Ph.D. degree in Computer Application Technology in 2000, respectively, all from the department of computer, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an city, China. Since 1997 he has been an associate professor. From May 2008 to May 2009, he was a visiting scholar in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Michigan State University. Dr. Li is the founder of the Soccer Robot team in Northwestern Polytechnical University, and the chief advisor from 2003 to 2009. His research interests include computational intelligence, learning and cooperation of multi-agent robot system, the real-time intelligent control.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence, run and organized by Rolf Pfeifer (from 2009 till 2012), Fabio Bonsignorio (since 2013), and me with partners around the world.

The ShanghAI Lectures have brought us a treasure trove of guest lectures by experts in robotics. You can find the whole series from 2012 here. Now, we’re bringing you the guest lectures you haven’t yet seen from previous years, starting with the first lectures from 2009 and releasing a new guest lecture every Thursday until all the series are complete. Enjoy!

ShanghAI Lectures: Adrianne Wortzel “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 05:00:48 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-17

This lecture discusses the relevance of embedding dramatic scenarios and expressive language into methodologies employed in the research and development of biochemical and/or electronic sentient beings. The author demonstrates how adding imaginative modalities to current practices can afford a profound and positive effect on outcomes.

Please note that due to some technical problems, some videos in the recording come without audio. We apologize for the inconvenience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75nkH37FCi8

Adrianne Wortzel explores a range of new technologies as web works, robotic installations and performance productions. Her Globe Theater Repertory Company of robots were featured in installations in Cooper Union’s “Technoseduction” exhibition, Creative Time’s “Art in the Anchorage”; Ars Electronic, “Fleshfactor” and Kunstpflug e.V., Berlin “Arreale99”. She wrote, produced and designed “Sayonara Diorama”, a performance production with robots, live performers and responsive remote performances via videoconferencing, via an Artist-in-Residence Grant at Lehman College Art Gallery in New York funded by the Electronic Media and Film Program of the New York State Council on the Arts.

She has organized and produced international performative webcasts, and was co-host and content provider for “Art Dirt” a weekly live video-streamed interview format webcast originating from New York. She is a recipient of a 2000-2001 National Science Foundation grant awarded for creating a robotic theater at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art where she is currently working on her project ELIZA REDUX, a series of webcast and videotaped psychoanalytic sessions between a human and a robot.

ShanghAI Lectures: Hiroshi Yokoi “Future Trend”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 05:45:07 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-17

In this guest lecture, Hiroshi Yokoi from University of Electro-Communication, Chofu, Japan, talks about prosthetic robot hands, EMG devices, bio-feedback, and the Japanese trends in Brain-Machine Interfaces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sLB9ARwFNU

ShanghAI Lectures: Wenwei Yu “A Simulation Study on Reflexive Responses during Walking”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 14:30:30 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-17

In this guest lecture, Wenwei Yu from Chiba University, Japan, introduces his approach to assistive technology and talks about (simulation) experiments in human walking and reflexive responses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvLVPmBgWUo

The ShanghAI lectures have brought us a treasure trove of guest lectures by experts in robotics. You can find the whole series from 2012 here. Now, we’re bringing you the guest lectures you haven’t yet seen from previous years, starting with the first lectures from 2009 and releasing a new guest lecture every Thursday until all the series are complete. Enjoy!

ShanghAI Lectures: Sukhan Lee “Cognitive Recognition for Service Robots”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 15:30:37 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-10

Recognition has been a subject of intense research interest to computer vision, AI, cognitive science, as well as robotics communities for, at least, several decades. As a result, a rich list of research outcomes on computer based recognition and understanding of symbols, objects, faces, gestures, as well as scenes are available to date in the form of publications, open source libraries, as well as commercial products. One of the major issues in recognition, especially in 2D recognition, has been how to deal with variations due to illumination, perspective, distance, texture as well as occlusion. Conventional approaches to engineering solution include the development of photometric and geometric features invariant to such variations and the efficient organization of visual memory for appearance/view based matching. Despite much success in recognition, the conventional approaches as described above are turned out to be inadequate for dealing with recognition involved in robotic services such as errand, home maid, etc., services in real-world environments. This is due to the fact that the environmental variations service robots must deal with are often beyond what conventional approaches can handle and, furthermore, the preconditions for recognition, such as the target being in the proper sight of and distance from camera in the first place, may not necessarily be met when recognition is ordered. It is apparent that recognition for service robots should extend its scope beyond conventional matching and classification toward more human-like capability under the framework of cognitive vision or cognitive recognition. In this lecture, I will introduce what constitutes cognitive recognition: namely, 1) bottom-up and top-down based saliency detection for implementing focus of attention as a means of efficient yet weak initial recognition step, 2) integration with knowledge to make best use of recognition context, 3) probabilistic evidence fusion for reaching reliable decision, 4) proactive collection of evidences for better decision, 5) cognitive engine where recognition is processed as a self-defined mission.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-oHUbwprLc

Sukhan Lee received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering, Seoul National University, 1974 and 1972, respectively, and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, 1982. From 1983 to 1997, he was a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of Southern California, and also a Senior Member of Technical Staff for Intelligent Robot R&D Programs, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA and California Institute of Technology from 1990 to 1997. From 1998 to 2003, he was an Executive Vice President and Chief Research Officer of MEMS, Nano Systems and Intelligent Systems Programs and Breakthrough Research Team, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology. Since 2003 he has been a professor and director of the School of Information and Communication Engineering and Intelligent Systems Research, respectively. Prof. Sukhan Lee has his research interest in the areas of Cognitive Robotics, Intelligent Systems, and Micro/Nano Electro-Mechanical systems.

ShanghAI Lectures: Alois Knoll, Mary Ellen Foster, Manuel Giuliani “Joint-Action Science and Technology”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 18:00:43 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-10

The success of the human species critically depends on our extraordinary ability to engage in joint action. Our perceptions, decisions and behaviour are tuned to those of others with whom we share beliefs, intentions and goals and thus form a group. These insights underlie the motivation of the JAST project, from which this presentation shows results. One of these results was the development of a robot that is able to joint-actly work together with a human on a collaborative assembly task.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSI2e73AoBM

Alois C. Knoll received the diploma (M.Sc.) degree in Electrical/Communications Engineering from the University of Stuttgart, Germany,in 1985 and his Ph.D. (summa cum laude) in computer science from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, in 1988. He served on the faculty of the computer science department of TU Berlin until 1993, when he qualified for teaching computer science at a university (habilitation). He then joined the Technical Faculty of the University of Bielefeld, where he was a full professor and the director of the research group Technical Informatics until 2001. Between May 2001 and April 2004 he was a member of the board of directors of the Fraunhofer-Institute for Autonomous Intelligent Systems. At AIS he was head of the research group “Robotics Construction Kits”, dedicated to research and development in the area of educational robotics. Since autumn 2001 he has been a professor of Computer Science at the Computer Science Department of the Technische Universität München. He is also on the board of directors of the Central Institute of Medical Technology at TUM (IMETUM-Garching); between April 2004 and March 2006 he was Executive Director of the Institute of Computer Science at TUM.

His research interests include cognitive, medical and sensor-based robotics, multi-agent systems, data fusion, adaptive systems and multimedia information retrieval. In these fields he has published over 200 technical papers and guest-edited international journals. He has participated (and has coordinated) several large scale national collaborative research projects (funded by the EU, the DFG, the DAAD, the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia). He initiated and was the program chairman of the First IEEE/RAS Conference on Humanoid Robots (IEEE-RAS/RSJ Humanoids2000), he was general chair of IEEE Humanoids2003 and general chair of Robotik 2004, the largest German conference on robotics, and he served on several other organising committees. Prof. Knoll is a member of the German Society for Computer Science (Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI)) and the IEEE.

ShanghAI Lectures: Samia Nefti-Mezziani “Non-rational Particle Swarm Optimization”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 15:00:47 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-03

Among the evolutionary algorithms, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) represents an optimization method where individuals, called particles, collaborate as a swarm to reach a collective goal. However, the usual logical decision processes used in the literature to model individual agent behaviour are generally found to be inadequate when the phenomena of uncertainty and risk are factored into the evolutionary process; and also incapable of fully emulating actual human decision-making behaviours under risk and uncertainty.

In this talk, I will propose a significant modification to agent reasoning processes employed so far in conventional Swarm Intelligence Techniques. I will show that endowing each particle with a non-rational behaviour, in the sense of Prospect Theory, can improve considerably the efficiency of global searching procedures. The results of this proposed technique is illustrated by numerical results obtained from applications to classical problems quoted in the literature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML_MytzonS8

Dr Samia Nefti is Associate Professor Reader in Computational Intelligence at University of Salford and head of Computational Intelligence and Robotics Research Group. She is a leading expert internationally in artificial intelligence and her research interests over the last 19 years are concerned with the development of cognitive models for information processing and decision support systems for complex and non-linear systems and fuzzy optimasation and clustering. Dr Nefti has published and edited extensively in the above areas, which appeared in leading academic journals. She has also organized many international and national conference and workshop. She has been involved and led national (EPSRC, TSB) and European (FP5, FP6) multi-disciplinary research projects. She is a Chartered member of BCS and active member of the European Network for the Advancement of Artificial Cognitive Systems and Vice-President of IEEE UKRI Chapter in Robotics and Automation.

ShanghAI Lectures: Christopher Lueg “Scaffolding & Embodiment: Perspectives in Human Computer Interaction”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 13:00:51 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-12-03

In this talk Professor Lueg will discuss how embodiment and scaffolding perspectives discussed in the ShanghAI Lectures on Natural and Artificial Intelligence can also be used to look at, and re-interpret, research topics in human computer interaction ranging from human information behavior in the real world to information interaction in online communities. In his work Professor Lueg understands human computer interaction as interaction with pretty much any kind of computer-based system ranging from desktop computers and mobile phones to microwave ovens and parking meters.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auOMNiYj-FM

Dr. sc.nat. Christopher Lueg is Professor of Computing at the University of Tasmania (Australia) where he established the ‘Information and Interaction’ research group. He was also a Research Fellow of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) for 2009-2012. Christopher’s research interests tend to manifest at the intersection of computer science, information science and cognitive science. He is teaching and researching in areas including human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), ubiquitous computing and context awareness, human information behavior and online communities. He edited (with Danyel Fisher, Microsoft Research) the book ‘From Usenet to CoWebs: Interacting with Social Information Spaces’ published by Springer in the CSCW series. His research students made him drink a Funky Monkey at Oomph.

ShanghAI Lectures: Weidong Chen “Modeling and Control of Mobile Robot Networks”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 15:00:10 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-26
Swarm intelligence of mobile robots is defined as a mobile robot network with only local interactions and finite sensing capabilities which can achieve global objectives and collective behaviors. The most well-known examples of swarm intelligence in nature are discovered in the collective behaviors of ant and bee colonies. Self-healing is one of the most important components in swarm intelligence.

In this talk, we will provide a theoretical model as well as a control method for self-healing of mobile robot networks based on motion synchronization. Using the graph and complex network theories, we establish the model of a mobile robot network which combines switched network topologies with an interaction dynamic model for describing the motion of the robots. We propose a performance metric of the network topology to evaluate the stability and the robustness of motion synchronization, analyze the effect of failed robots upon the network topology, and show the necessity and principle of the self-healing method based on only local interactions. A fully distributed and recursive topology control for self-healing with switched topologies is then proposed. We show that the self-healing algorithm can prevent the network topology from being separated into two or more disconnected parts, and maintain the performance of the network. Based on the Lyapunov exponent, we further provide a criterion of the stability of the network with the proposed distributed control. Finally, we demonstrate the advantages of our self-healing method by performing simulations of two typical tasks, formation generation and coverage.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpVU84UpVFA

Weidong Chen received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Control Engineering in 1990 and 1993, and Ph.D. degree in Mechatronics in 1996, respectively, all from the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China. Since 2005 he has been a professor of the Department of Automation at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, and director of the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Processing. From 2003 to 2004, he was a visiting associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Ohio State University. Dr. Chen’s research interests include autonomous mobile robot, multi-robot cooperation, and micro manipulation.

ShanghAI Lectures: Eugen Elmiger “Drives for Intelligent Robots”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 15:30:35 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-19

In this guest lecture, Eugen Elmiger from maxon motor ag, Sachseln, Switzerland, gives an overview of the precision motors his company produces, and shows how they are used in robotics and other areas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Q_srUcSvs

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

ShanghAI Lectures: Josh Bongard “Resilient Machines”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 14:00:37 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-19

If the body plays a central role in intelligence, as a roboticist, how do we choose an appropriate body for our robot? Evolutionary robotics allows us to automatically optimize the physical layout of our robots as we also optimize their controllers. In this talk I will demonstrate how selecting or evolving an appropriate robot body can (1) simplify control, (2) make seemingly difficult tasks easier, (3) increase evolvability, (4) provide new behaviors, (5) facilitate the extraction of information from the environment, (6) generate new research questions, and (7) improve scalability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2B0oJyBfF8

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

ShanghAI Lectures: Hisato Kobayashi “AI-ish approach for complicated robot control”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 07:30:19 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-12

If we try to describe any kinds of robot by mathematical models, they must be very complicated equations. Even, such robotic systems are categorized as a conventional dynamic system consist of positive definite inertia matrix, Coriolis’ force term, friction term, gravity term and so on, we cannot derive any authentic control scheme from such complicated nonlinear systems.

Of course, we can make a servo system for a joint control but we do not have any systematic control scheme for whole robots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-n6meJXyQo

Hisato Kobayashi was born in Japan 1951. He graduated from Waseda University, he received both master degree and doctoral degree in electrical engineering from Waseda University in 1975 and 1978 respectively. During 1977-1982, he was a research associate of Tokyo University Agriculture and Technology. He joined Hosei University in 1982. He spent almost one year at Stuttgart University Germany 1988-1989 as an invited visiting researcher of Alexander Humboldt Foundatiion. He is now professor of Hosei University Tokyo, department of art and technology，he was president of Hosei University Research Institute, California. During 1998-2001, he was a visiting scholar of Stanford University and doing a joint project entitled “Sleep Smart Project.” He was Editor in Chief of Advanced Robotics, which was issued by Robotics Society in Japan and published by Brill Publisher in Holland. He was elected as fellow of IEEE in 2002. His research interests cover control theory, mechatronics systems, robotics and health care systems.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

The ShanghAI lectures have brought us a treasure trove of guest lectures by experts in robotics. You can find the whole series from 2012 here. Now, we’re bringing you the guest lectures you haven’t yet seen from previous years, starting with the first lectures from 2009 and releasing a new guest lecture every Thursday until all the series are complete. Enjoy!

ShanghAI Lectures: Shaohua Tan “Qualitative modeling and analysis”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 14:00:01 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-12

“It has increasingly been realized that some of the key characteristics underlying real-world complex dynamical systems (such as economical, financial and ecological systems) can only been modelled and thus understood and predicted at qualitative level directly.However, lacking a coherent and arithmetically sound theoretical framework for modeling and analyzing such systems entirely at qualitative level has long been an obstacle to such a qualitative modeling endeavor. Our research work led to a novel qualitative theory that provides a solution to overcome this obstacle. We develop a ternary qualitative algebra and related arithmetic operations directly over a qualitative space and use this algebra as the basis to build a direct qualitative modeling approach with qualitative functions without falling back to quantitative details inherent in most existing approaches. One of the important results of our proposed modeling theory is that any qualitative system can be represented as a piecewise linear qualitative function. This result lays a theoretical foundation for piecewise linear qualitative function structure to serve as a normal form for representing arbitrary qualitative functions. This short lecture will provide a non-technical description of our qualitative modeling techniques and demonstrate its usefulness in modeling, thus analyzing, complex real-world systems such as financial and economical systems.”

Professor Shaohua Tan received his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium in 1987. He has been Professor in Center for Information Science, Peking University, for 13 years. He held various teaching and research positions in a number of countries prior to joining Peking University. His research interests include developing qualitative modeling techniques in modeling complex real-world systems and analysis of financial systems using AI techniques.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZjyoo0Y1Js

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

ShanghAI Lectures: Koh Hosoda “Compliant Body as a Source of Intelligence”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 22:30:17 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-05

Animals and Humans utilize their compliance: muscular system and soft skin. The compliance plays an important role to exhibit intelligent behavior. To build an intelligent artificial agent, therefore, soft material is crucial. In the lecture, I will talk about several robots consisting of soft material for adaptive behavior. They are viewed from the design principles: cheap design, material property and redundancy.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVKUcgOc7Pg

Koh Hosoda received the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Kyoto University, Japan in 1993. From 1993 to 1997, he was an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering for Computer-Controlled Machinery, Osaka University. From 1997 to 2010 he was an Associate Professor of the Department of Adaptive Machine Systems, Osaka University. From 2005 to 2010, he was a group leader of the JST Asada ERATO Project, as well. From Apr 2010, he has been a Professor of the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University. He stayed at AI laboratory, Zurich as a guest professor through Apr 1998 to Mar 1999.

The ShanghAI lectures have brought us a treasure trove of guest lectures by experts in robotics. You can find the whole series from 2012 here. Now, we’re bringing you the guest lectures you haven’t yet seen from previous years, starting with the first lectures from 2009 and releasing a new guest lecture every Thursday until all the series are complete. Enjoy!

ShanghAI Lectures: SAYA/Hiroshi Kobayashi “Hello, my name is SAYA”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 01:00:02 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-11-05

In this guest lecture, SAYA, the robotic teacher from Japan, introduces herself and talks about the Tokyo University of Science, where she was constructed by Hiroshi Kobayashi.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2E8NUPmMUA

ShanghAI Lectures: Brian David Johnson “Brain Machines: Robots, Free Will and Science Fiction Prototypes”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 15:30:04 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-10-29

How can science fiction help prototype emerging science theory and experimentation? Expanding on the framework of consumer experience architecture, this talk explores how a fictional story, based specifically on current works of scientific research, can lead to the expansion and further experimentation of a dramatic new approach to artificial intelligence and domestic robots.

The talk will explore a novel and innovative methodology (science fiction prototyping) which facilitates the creation of new research opportunities and commercial products, based around the concept of integrating science fiction and fact within a regenerative prototyping cycle.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul3IVWAWTyk

The future is Brian David Johnson’s business. As a Consumer Experience Architect he develops future products for the Intel Corporation, a global microprocessor manufacturer. He speaks and writes extensively about future technologies in articles and scientific papers as well as in science fiction novels (Fake Plastic Love, the forthcoming This is Planet Earth) and short stories. He has directed two feature films, and an illustrator and commissioned painter.

ShanghAI Lectures: Auke Ijspeert “Controlling the Locomotion of Robots Using Central Pattern Generator Models”

Nathan Labhart — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 13:50:05 +0000

Animal locomotion control is in a large part based on central pattern generators (CPGs), which are neural networks capable of producing complex rhythmic patterns while being activated and modulated by relatively simple control signals. These networks are located in the spinal cord for vertebrate animals. In this talk, I will present how mathematical models and robots can be used as tools to get a better understanding of the functioning of these circuits. In particular I will present how we model CPGs of lower vertebrates (lamprey and salamander) using systems of coupled oscillators, and how we test the CPG models on board of amphibious robots, such as a new salamander-like robot capable of swimming and walking. I will also show how the concept of CPGs implemented as coupled oscillators can be a useful control paradigm for various types of articulated robots from snake to humanoid robots.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFL2GxVBWC4

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-10-29

Auke Ijspeert is a SNF (Swiss National Science Foundation) professor at the EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne), and head of the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group (BIRG). He has a BSc/MSc in Physics from the EPFL, and a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. He carried out postdocs at IDSIA and EPFL (LAMI), and at the University of Southern California (USC). Before returning to the EPFL, he was a research assistant professor at USC, and an external collaborator at ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research institute) in Japan. He is still affiliated as adjunct faculty to both institutes. His research interests are at the intersection between robotics, computational neuroscience, nonlinear dynamical systems, and applied machine learning.

He is interested in using numerical simulations and robots to get a better understanding of the functioning of animals (in particular their fascinating sensorimotor coordination abilities), and in using inspiration from biology to design novel types of robots and adaptive controllers (see for instance Ijspeert et al, Science, 315(5817):1416-1420, 2007). He is regularly invited to give talks on these topics. With his colleagues, he has received the Best Paper Award at ICRA2002, the Industrial Robot Highly Commended Award at CLAWAR2005, and the Best Paper Award at the IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2007 conference. He is associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, has acted as technical program chair of 5 international conferences (BioADIT2004, SAB2004, AMAM2005, BioADIT2006, LATSIS2006), and has been a program committee member of over 40 conferences.

ShanghAI Lectures: Bernard Horan “Mixing real and virtual worlds in education”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 13:40:28 +0000

Bernard Horan presents an overview of a trial undertaken at the University of Essex in the use of a mixed-reality teaching environment. The lecture includes a summary of the motivations for mixed reality teaching, its implementation using Project Wonderland and a summary of the results of the trial. From the 2009 ShanghAI Lecture series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GYsFINqWts

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-10-22

Bernard Horan works for Sun Microsystems Laboratories as a senior staff engineer. His current research uses Project Wonderland and includes: an investigation into the use of 3d recording and playback; and the utility of mixed reality teaching to bridge the gap between local and physically remote students. Bernard’s earlier published research includes the semantic web and wireless sensor networks. Bernard is also a Visiting Fellow at the University of Essex, UK.

ShanghAI Lectures: Lutz Jäncke “On the neuropsychology of avatars”

Nathan Labhart — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 13:00:31 +0000

Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2009-10-22

In my talk I will demonstrate why virtual reality (VR) is interesting for neuroscientists or cognitive neuroscientists. A major question in cognitive neuroscience is whether VR environments cause the same experience as real environments. If this is the case the brain states evoked by VR and real environments should be the same. In our experiments we have used several virtual scenarios to examine the influence of VR environments on brain activation and subjective experience. First, we have used virtual roller coaster experiments as stimuli in the context of fMRI experiments. These experiments have shown that typical brain areas are involved in processing this kind of VR scenario. Most interesting was the fact that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is strongly involved in controlling the subjective presence experience. While this area is involved in controlling the presence experience in adults it is not involved in kids. In kids, however, we uncovered stronger brain activations in emotional brain areas. Obviously kid cannot control their emotional reactions via the DLPFC as adults. This might have consequences how kids behave in VR environments. In a further set of experiments we are interested to learn how humans react in response to virtual persons (avatars) or how they interact with avatars suffering from pain (virtual experiment). Altogether these experiments demonstrate that human brain reacts to VR stimuli mostly similar as to real stimuli.

The ShanghAI Lectures are a videoconference-based lecture series on Embodied Intelligence run by Rolf Pfeifer and organized by me and partners around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHzb446u_00

Lutz Jäncke is professor for Neuropsychology at the University Zurich since 2002. His main research interests are focussed around the question how the human brain is shaped by experience. To understand the effects of leaning and experience on the human brain he uses modern brain imaging techniques like fMRI and EEG. However, he is also strongly grounded in cognitive psychology. One of his specialties is to use professional musicians as model for neuroplasticity. He has also a special interest in virtual reality because he is interested whether VR environments stimulate the same experiences in our brain as real environments. In addition, he is also interested to explore the possibilities of VR for neurological and neuropsychological rehabilitation.