IST06 Networking Session "Embodied Emotion, Cognition and Action for Autonomous and Interactive Artifacts"

Embodied Emotion, Cognition and Action for Autonomous and Interactive Artifacts (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/istevent/2006/networking/day2/index_en.htm)

Networking Session @ IST 2006 Event

Helsinki Messukeskus (The Helsinki Fair Centre), Messuaukio 1, FIN-00521 Helsinki (Website: http://www.ist2006.fi/index.html. Phone: +358 9 150 91)

22 November 2006, 9am – 10:30am, Room 207

Contact: Lola Cañamero (L.Canamero@herts.ac.uk)


PROGRAM

Introduction – Lola Cañamero (5 mins)

First part: Networking opportunities within FP6 (9:05 – 9:50)

The objective of the first part of the session is to provide a framework for FP6 projects with a common interest in embodied emotion and cognition to learn about one another and explore opportunities for interaction in the short term. The outcome of this part should be a list of opportunities for interaction among current FP6 projects (e.g., workshops to which other projects could be invited to attend, joint organization of events, etc).

- HUMAINE – Lola Cañamero (5 mins, 9:05 – 9:10)
- euCognition – David Vernon (5 mins, 9:10 – 9:15)
- ICEA – Tom Ziemke (5 mins, 9:15 – 9:20)
- ENACTIVE – Antonio Camurri (5 mins, 9:20 – 9:25)
- MindRACES – Martin Butz (5 mins, 9:25 – 9:30)
- Embodied emotion and music (TAI-CHI + S2S) – Antonio Camuri (5 mins, 9:30 – 9:35)
- Discussion (open to all participants): common interests, intersections, and opportunities for interaction within FP6 (9:35 – 9:50)


Second part: Looking to FP7 and beyond: Challenges and research agenda (9:50 – 10:30)

The objective of the second part of the session is twofold: (1) to identify main problems, obstacles, challenges and potential contributions of embodied emotion and cognition for autonomous and interactive artifacts; (2) to identify critical aspects where projects would be needed and could constitute FP7 proposals and elaborate a draft “research agenda”. The outcome of this part should be a draft “research agenda” or position that could contribute towards the strategic objectives of FP7 (and beyond).

- Identification of bottlenecks, challenges, and needs (9:50 – 10:05)
- Draft research agenda and examples of potential projects (10:05 – 10:30)



Note: Paolo Petta will act as rapporteur of this networking session.


REMINDER OF SESSION RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES (FROM PROPOSAL SUBMISSION):

A) Session objectives:

Different FP6 projects (e.g. among others HUMAINE, ICEA, euCognition) emphasize the role of emotion in cognition in the context of autonomous and interactive artifacts, and the importance of studying this link from an embodied perspective. Although these projects approach this issue from different points of view, their intersections and complementarities need to be investigated and exploited to advance the state of the art in this topic that can make many contributions towards achieving autonomous artifacts that can cooperate and interact socially with people. In the perspective of “networking across ‘islands’ with common interest”, the goal of the proposed session is twofold: (a) to provide a framework for projects with a common interest in embodied emotion and cognition to learn about one another and explore opportunities for interaction in the short term; and (b) to draft a longer-term “research agenda” for this area that can also lead to concrete projects within FP7.

B) Rationale:

The need to integrate emotion in cognitive systems, and to do so from an embodied perspective is increasedly acknowledged. For example, within FP6, the thematic area “Emotion in Cognition and Action” of the NoE HUMAINE investigates plausible models and mechanisms to achieve this integration in embodied autonomous systems that can also interact socially and be part of multi-modal interfaces; the IP ICEA adopts the perspective of autonomy to integrate cognitive, emotional and self-maintenance regulatory processes in an architecture for cognitive systems; the NoE euCognition has a broad perspective to reflect on how this integration can contribute to the advancement of artificial cognitive systems. Practical work in this area is however in its infancy and scattered across research groups and projects with different perspectives and goals. Much multi-disciplinary joint reflection and cooperative work is needed to assess which aspects and problems of embodied emotions and cognition must be addressed not only in the near future but also in the mid and long term in order to (a) make sound progress and (b) integrate research results into artifacts that cooperate with people in their everyday environments. The proposed networking session aims to take a step in this direction by setting the above-mentioned double objective of providing a framework to explore synergies among current FP6 projects, and to draft a longer-term draft research agenda that could contribute to FP7.

This double objective also sets the expected outcomes of the session: (1) a list of opportunities for interaction among current FP6 projects (e.g., workshops to which other projects could be invited to attend, joint organization of events), and (2) a draft “research agenda” or position paper that could contribute towards identifying strategic objectives and needs for FP7.

To achieve the above-mentioned objectives, we propose to organize the session in three main parts: (1) a round of short presentations of the main activities of all the relevant projects participating in the session that would end with the elaboration of a list of opportunities for concrete interactions among them (about 30 minutes); (2) a brainstorming session to identify main problems, obstacles, challenges and potential contributions of embodied emotion and cognition for autonomous and interactive artifacts (about 30 minutes); and (3) a last part (about 30 minutes) devoted to elaborate the draft “research agenda” and identify critical aspects where projects would be needed and could constitute FP7 proposals.

C) Documents and links:

- Cañamero, L., Emotion understanding from the perspective of autonomous robots research, Neural Networks 18 (2005): 445–455
- HUMAINE Workpackage 7 deliverables (http://emotion-research.net/deliverables)
- http://www.emotion-research.net
- http://www.eucognition.org
- http://www2.his.se/icea
- https://www.enactivenetwork.org
- http://www.mindraces.org
- http://www.taichi.cf.ac.uk
- http://www.s2s2.org