[alife] PPSN 2014 Workshop on Nature-inspired Techniques for Robotics - CFP

[Nicolas Bredeche]

The Parallel Problem Solving from Nature Conference (PPSN 2014) will host
the Workshop on Nature-inspired techniques for robotics (September 13,
2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia).

The purpose of the workshop is to analyze the state-of-art /
state-of-knowledge in the field of nature based computation techniques to
automatically design robot controllers and/or morphology, as well as
learning and optimization of real or simulated autonomous robots. We
consider such nature-inspired techniques from the perspective of both
engineering (designing efficient robots wrt. a task) and biology
(understanding biological mechanisms using robots).

This workshop aims at bringing together researchers and experts in
different disciplines, fostering interdisciplinary debate between fields
such as neuro-evolution, evolutionary design, artificial life, evolutionary
robotics, developmental and learning in robotics, adaptive collective
robotic systems, etc. The workshop is intended as a melting pot for
engineers and researchers working on any of the topics listed above but
also for any other attendant to PPSN who can be interested in the potential
application to robotics of his/her field of expertise.

Topics:
        • Collective adaptive systems: swarm, social intelligence, etc.
        • Evolutionary robotics: co-evolution, open-ended evolution,
shaping,
        • Development and learning with robots
        • Bio-inspired robotic design: evolvable hardware,
morpho-functional machines, modular robotics, etc.
        • Bio-inspired controller design: artificial neural networks, etc.
        • Modelling and simulation with robots: artificial life,
individual-based modelling, mixed societies, etc.

This half-day single-track workshop will feature:
- keynote talks from different researchers in the field (S. Doncieux
(UPMC), E. Haasdijk (VUA), H. Hamman (Univ. Paderborn), J-B. Mouret (UPMC),
A. Prieto (Univ a Courña), S. Risi(IT Univ. Copenhagen))
- research spotlight (10 min presentation) from submitted works
- a panel discussion

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

We invite authors to submit a 1- or 2-page abstract describing research or
a review/discussion related to the topics listed above. Summary of already
published research (journals or conferences) as well as summary of research
program are very welcome. Participants with accepted contributions will be
given a 10-minutes slot for presenting their work in a spotlight session.

Please submit your abstract through e-mail in PDF only at
claudio.rossi at upm.es and nicolas.bredeche at isir.upmc.fr

Important dates:
        • Submission: May 12th, 2014
        • Notification of acceptance: May 30th, 2014
        • Workshop:  September 13th, 2014

For more information: http://www.disam.upm.es/NIR_workshop_2014