[alife] Call for Symposium Proposals - AISB 2005 @ Univ. Hertfordshire, UK

[Chrystopher Nehaniv]

Call for Symposium Proposals in all areas of AI/AL/Cog Sci/Adaptive
Behaviour at the premier UK Artificial Intelligence society's
annual conference:

The 2005 AISB convention will be held 12-15 April 2005 at the
de Havilland campus of the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield,
England (20 minutes north of London by train, within easy reach of major
airports).

************** AISB 2005 CONVENTION ******

Theme:
Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents

          CALL FOR SYMPOSIUM PROPOSALS

************** DEADLINE: 31 July 2004 *********

The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of
Behaviour (AISB) is pleased to announce its forthcoming convention and
to invite proposals for the Symposia which will largely constitute the
event.

DATES: from 12-15 April 2005 inclusive

LOCATION: University of Hertfordshire, de Havilland Campus, Hatfield,
England

WEBSITE: aisb2005.feis.herts.ac.uk (to be updated regularly)

FORMAT: up to ten serial/parallel Symposia on AI or Cognitive Science
topics preferably related to the overall Convention theme of Social
Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents

CONVENTION CHAIRS, ORGANIZERS and LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS:
Kerstin Dautenhahn (General chair, K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk)
Chrystopher Nehaniv (Vice-chair)

Local Organizing Committee:
Rene te Boekhorst
Lola Canamero
Kerstin Dautenhahn
Chrystopher Nehaniv
Daniel Polani

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THE AISB'05 SYMPOSIA

By default an AISB'05 Symposium will last for two days within the four
days of the Convention. However, we will also consider proposals for
one-day and three-day Symposia.

Each Symposium will have a Programme Chair, who will be responsible for
administration of the programme, recruiting a programme committee,
arranging the refereeing of extended abstracts for presentation of
papers at the event, and collecting full papers for a pre-proceedings. It
is hoped that each Symposium programme chair will try to arrange for
post-Convention publication of revised papers from the Symposia in the
form of book, special journal issue, etc. Given that the name of the
Society includes the phrase "Simulation of Behaviour'' we welcome Symposia
that have a Cognitive Science or interdisciplinary flavour as opposed to a
more narrowly Artificial Intelligence flavour.

***********************************************************************
OTHER ASPECTS OF THE CONVENTION

We plan for there to be approximately four invited plenary keynote talks.

***********************************************************************
CONVENTION THEME:
SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE AND INTERACTION IN ANIMALS, ROBOTS AND AGENTS

Humans are above all social animals. For artificially intelligent systems,
can it be otherwise?

Intelligence in humans and other animals has many facets and is expressed
in a variety of ways in how the individual in its lifetime - or a
population on an evolutionary timescale - deals with, adapts to, and
co-evolves with the environment.  Traditionally, social or emotional
intelligence has been considered different from a more problem-solving
oriented view of human intelligence. However, more and more evidence from
a variety of different research fields highlight the important role of
social and emotional intelligence across all facets of intelligence in
humans.

The Convention theme Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals,
Robots and Agents reflects a current trend towards increasingly
interdisciplinary approaches that are pushing the boundaries of
traditional science and are necessary in order to answer deep questions
regarding the social nature of intelligence in humans and other animals,
as well as to address the challenge of synthesizing computational agents
or robotic artifacts that show aspects of biological social intelligence.
Exciting new developments are emerging from collaborations among computer
scientists, roboticists, psychologists, sociologists, cognitive
scientists, primatologists, ethologists and researchers from other
disciplines, e.g. leading to increasingly sophisticated simulation models
of socially intelligent agents, or to a new generation of robots that are
able to learn from and socially interact with each other or people.  Such
interdisciplinary work advances our understanding of social intelligence
in nature, and leads to new theories, models, architectures and designs in
the domain of Artificial Intelligence or other sciences of the artificial.
New advancements in computer and robotic technology facilitate the
emergence of multi-modal "natural" interfaces between computers or robots
and people, including embodied conversational agents or robotic
pets/assistants/companions that we are increasingly sharing our home and
work space with. People tend to create relationships with such socially
intelligence artifacts, and are even willing to accept them as helpers in
healthcare, therapy or rehabilitation.  Thus, socially intelligent
artifacts are becoming part of our lives, including many desirable as well
as possibly undesirable effects, and Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive
Science research can play an important role in addressing  many of the
huge scientific challenges involved. Keeping an open mind towards other
disciplines, embracing work from a variety of disciplines studying human
as well as non-human animals, might help create artifacts that might not
only do their job, but that do their job right.

The overall theme therefore allows a very broad range of Symposia, for
example:

-Human-computer interaction
-Robot companions
-Evolution of Communication
-Social learning in animals and robots
-Socially intelligent agents
-Creativity and culture
-Developing social minds
-Artificial societies and organizations
-Evolutionary computation, machine learning, and interaction

***However, it is to be emphasized that
PROPOSALS IN ALL AREAS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
WILL BE CONSIDERED***

***********************************************************************
INTERNATIONAL NATURE

Although the AISB may be thought of as a national AI society for the
United Kingdom, we enthusiastically welcome Symposium proposals from
anywhere in the world and participants from anywhere in the world in the
Symposium programmes.

***********************************************************************
MAKING A PROPOSAL

Proposals should be made by EMAILING IN PLAIN TEXT to Kerstin Dautenhahn
at K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk, enclosing the following information. (Prior
informal email enquiries from possible proposers are welcomed):

TITLE of Symposium

NAME & AFFILIATION of Symposium Chair - including both postal and
email addresses and both fax and telephone numbers.

ABSTRACT for Symposium - not more than 200 words, explaining the
remit of the Symposium. This should be suitable for inclusion in a
call for papers.

CASE FOR SUPPORT - not more than 1000 words, arguing the case for
including your Symposium at the AISB'05 event. You may put observations
about your own background and suitability in the Additional Comments
section below.

SYMPOSIUM LENGTH JUSTIFIACTION -- if you are proposing a Symposium of
a length other than two days, please briefly indicate the reasons.

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE - names and affiliations of (at least) four people
who have agreed in principle to serve on your Symposium's programme
committee. The programme committee should represent (at least) four
different institutions, preferably including international participation.
It should as far as possible cover the intended breadth of the Symposium,
especially if it is multidisciplinary.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS -- no more than 500 words, on, for example, the
relevance of your background to the proposed Symposium.

BIBLIOGRAPHY -- any literature references cited above.

Wording beyond the word limits will be deleted before the proposal is
considered!!

Proposals will be selected with the aid of the Committee of the AISB.
Unless there are very special circumstances, please do not expect us to
consider web pages or other documents referenced by the proposal.

*** TO FACILIATE THE PROPOSAL CONSIDERATION PROCESS,
PLEASE DO NOT SEND ANYTHING OTHER THAN PLAIN-TEXT EMAILS.
SO, no Word attachments, postscript, HTML, etc.

***********************************************************************
TIMETABLE

Symposium Proposal submission deadline: 31 July 2004

Convention: 12-15 April 2005

************************************************************************
PLEASE NOTE SYMPOSIUM PROPOSAL DEADLINE: 31st July 2004!!!
************************************************************************

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Dr. Chrystopher L. Nehaniv
Professor of Mathematical & Evolutionary Computer Sciences

Adaptive Systems & Algorithms Research Groups
School of Computer Science
University of Hertfordshire
College Lane
Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB
United Kingdom
e-mail: C.L.Nehaniv at herts.ac.uk
phone:  +44-1707-284-470
fax:    +44-1707-284-303
URL:    http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/welcome.html

Director, EPSRC Network on Evolvability in Biological & Software Systems
Associate Editor, BioSystems
Associate Editor, Interaction Studies