HRI 2014 Workshop on Cognitive Architectures for Human-Robot Interaction

I am co-organising a half-day workshop at the 9th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction next year (HRI'14), that will be held on the 3rd of March 2014 in Bielefeld, Germany. If you have any interest in this topic, or even would just like to find out more, please consider joining us! We have intended that this will be an inclusive event, with a high discussion content, and an emphasis on dissemination of ideas that will hopefully influence ongoing (social) Human-Robot Interaction research.

I've been interested in cognitive systems, cognitive robotics and cognitive architectures for a while now as my interest (and subsequent research) is in exploring general principles of cognition/intelligence, both for understanding natural systems and for the development of 'better' robotic systems (to test theories and accomplish tasks). I think that Human-Robot Interaction provides a fascinating context to explore cognitive architectures, as it provides a very different set of challenges to theory and implementation than have typically been considered. Hence the workshop!


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CALL FOR WORKSHOP SUBMISSIONS AND PARTICIPATION

HRI 2014 Workshop on Cognitive Architectures for Human-Robot Interaction

Monday 3rd March, 2014 (Bielefeld, Germany)

http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/socce/staff/paulbaxter/cogarch4hri/

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IMPORTANT DATES
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** Submission deadline: Friday 10th January, 2014
** Notification of acceptance: Monday 20th January, 2014
** Final (accepted) submission: Friday 7th February, 2014
** Workshop: Monday 3rd March, 2014 (half day)

DESCRIPTION
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Cognitive Architectures are constructs (encompassing both theory and models) that seek to account for cognition (over multiple timescales) using a set of domain-general structures and mechanisms. Typically inspired by human cognition, the emphasis is on deriving a set of principles of operation not constrained to a specific task or context. This therefore presents a holistic perspective: it forces the system designer to initially take a step back from diving into computational mechanisms and consider what sort of functionality needs to be present, and how this relates to other cognitive competencies. Thus the very process of applying such an approach to HRI may yield benefits, such as the integration of evidence from the human sciences in a principled manner, the facilitation of comparison of different systems (abstracting away from specific computational algorithms), and as a more principled manner to verify and refine the resultant autonomous systems.

For HRI, such an approach to building autonomous systems based on Cognitive Architecture, 'cognitive integration', would emphasise first those aspects of behaviour that are common across domains, before applying these to specific interaction contexts for evaluation. Furthermore, given inspiration from human cognition, it can also inherently take into account the behaviour of the humans with which the system should interact, with the intricacies and sub-optimality that this entails.

To date, there have been relatively few efforts to apply such ideas to the context of HRI in a structured manner. The aim of this workshop is therefore to provide a forum to discuss the reasons and potential for the application of Cognitive Architectures to autonomous HRI systems. It is expected that by attending this workshop and engaging in the discussions, participants will gain further insight into how a consideration of Cognitive Architectures complements the development of autonomous social robots, and contribute to the cross-fertilization of ideas in this exciting area.

SUBMISSION AND PARTICIPATION
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Contributions are sought from all who are interested in participation. A light-touch review process will be applied to check for relevance - the emphasis of the workshop is on inclusion, discussion and dissemination. Prior to the workshop, the organizers will integrate these into a list a perspectives that will form the basis for the discussions.

Please prepare a 2-page position paper on your research-informed perspective on cognitive architectures for human-robot interaction (particularly social). The HRI template should be used for this submission (ACM SIG Proceedings). Submissions should be sent to: paul.baxter(a)plymouth.ac.uk All accepted position papers will be archived on the workshop website.

ORGANISERS AND CONTACT
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** Paul Baxter (Plymouth University, U.K.) and Greg Trafton (Naval Research Laboratory, USA)
** Email: paul.baxter(a)plymouth.ac.uk

Cognitive Architecture for Social Human-Robot Interaction

It's now the last day of the summer school in Cambridge, and it's been a very interesting if packed week of talks, activities and discussions. Just what a summer school should be in my opinion.

I gave my little special session talk yesterday to a little group (all 25-30 of them, to whom I am grateful for not leaving when I invited them to do so towards the beginning of my talk*). It was an introductory overview of the application of cognitive architectures to the development of autonomous systems for social human-robot interaction. Here's the abstract I used to try and draw people in:

What is Cognitive Architecture and why is it important for HRI? The ongoing developments towards social companion robots raises questions of information integration, behavioural control, etc, in coordination and collaboration with humans. While introducing cognitive architecture, I will emphasise fundamental organisation and common operating principles, specifically based on inspiration from human cognition: learning from the agents with which the robots must socially interact. In this special interest session, these issues will be explored, taking in examples from existing architectures along the way. I would like to put forward the idea that a consideration of Social HRI from the perspective of cognitive architecture enables a different take on the design of social robots - one that emphasises holistic human-robot interacting systems. In doing so, the intention is to leave participants with more questions than are answered, in the hope that some of the issues raised find themselves being further developed in ongoing work.

It was only a short talk, and I intentionally focused on the motivations for wanting to do so, rather than trying to persuade people to use one particular approach or another (even refraining from mentioning my own views on the matter as much as possible). Nevertheless, we had some interesting little discussions, including one on the nature of organisation of behaviour: there were a few people who insisted that the classic "perception -> cognition -> action" pipeline model was the only thing that needed to be considered. While I respectfully disagreed (as does a great deal of the literature on robotics, enaction, active perception, embodied cognition, etc), it did remind me that this assumption does seem to be implicit in many different perspectives, whether cognitive architecture or not.

In any case: we've just had a great talk from Prof. Roger Moore (Uni Sheffield) on the motivation and basis for his mathematical model of the Uncanny Valley effect as very well known in the popular media. Well worth a look at the paper, as it has a number of fundamental consequences for the HRI domain.

* I always start my talks with the conclusion...

The work of von Foerster: summary of a summary

The academic work of Heinz von Foerster was, and remains, highly influential in a number of disciplines, namely due to the pervasive implications of his distinction between first and second order cybernetics (and its antecedent ideas). Where first order cybernetics may be simply described as the study of feedback systems by observation, second-order cybernetics extends this observation of a system to incorporate the observer itself: it is reflexive in that the observation of the feedback system is itself a feedback system to be explained. While I am familiar with this concept, I am not particularly familiar with the body of work produced by von Foerster to instantiate this concept, although I have encountered numerous references to him, particularly when the subject is related to enactivism.

In 2003, Bernard Scott republished a summary of von Foersters' work which he originally published in 1979. The original paper was published just a few years after the official retirement of von Foerster, who apparently (as many an academic has before and since) continued his work for many subsequent years. It serves as a summary of the breadth of work and its contribution, and was republished partly in recognition of the continuing, and expanding, influence it exerts. This post is a very brief summary of this summary paper.

In general terms, von Foerster views on computation and cognition seem to be inherently integrated, holistic, proposing dynamic interactions between the micro, the macro and the global. This view thus contrasts with functional models of cognitive processes which in their nature, can only be static snapshots of the dynamic interactions at play: cf autopoietic theory that extends this notion with the principles of self-reconstitution and organisational closure. Particularly, he emphasises the necessity of considering perception, cognition and memory as indivisible aspects of a complete integrated cognitive system, cf enactivism.

With this consideration as a consistent thread, four primary phases in the development of von Foersters' research are identified. Firstly is his consideration of large molecules as the basis for biological computation, rather than the prevailing focus on neural networks, and that 'forms' of computation underlie all computational systems. Secondly is the exploration of self-organisation, and the reconciliation of organisation with the potential paradox of self-reference. In this sense, a system that increases in order (organisation) requires that its observer adapts its frame-of-reference to incorporate this: if this were not required of the observer, then the system can not be regarded as self-organising. The resulting infinite recursion provides an account of the conditions necessary for social communication and interaction: a consequence of the second order cybernetics. Thirdly is a focus on the nature of memory as being key to understanding cognition and consciousness. Returning to the notion of holistic cognition described above, this is in contrast to the perspective of memory as a static storage mechanism which was prevalent among behaviourist psychologists, and still remains prevalent in the work of designers of synthetic cognitive models and architectures (the countering of which is a key theme of my own research). The fourth and final identified phase (of the original 1979 paper that is) is the formalisation of the concept of self-referential systems and analysis as recursive computation, and the extension of this to apply also to the observer.

The threads of self reference and a holistic perspective have, as noted above, had a wide influence, and continue to do so. I did not realise before that Maturana and Varela's well known formulation of autopoiesis was done at the lab that von Foerster led (the Biological Computing Laboratory, University of Illinois). The relationship is of course clear now that I know about it (!): autopoiesis builds upon the self-reference and holism with self-reconstitution and organisational closure to form a fully reflexive theory. Similarly, enactivism seems to owe much to von Foersters' influence, with its integrated consideration of agent and environment, embodiment and cognition - a theme that has become increasing prevalent in recent years among those working on cognitive robotics with a more theoretical perspective - extending to the consideration of social behaviour. In all, the principle of second-order cybernetics and the theoretical perspectives upon which it is based remain important in the consideration of cognition and human behaviour despite its seemingly abstract theoretical nature, and Heinz von Foerster played a rather prominent role in providing its underpinnings.

Some of the 'buzzwords' raised in the summary of von Foersters' research which carry through as such today (among others - and I use the term buzzwords without any pejorative intent, merely as a 'note-to-self'):
- second order cybernetics
- self-organisation
- the holistic nature of cognition (developed as enactivism)

Paper reference:
Scott, B. (2003), "Heinz von Foerster - an appreciation (revisited)", Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 10(3/4), pp137-149

Encephalon #63

Of Two Minds has just put up the 63rd edition of Encephalon. A nice round-up as usual, with congratulations of course going to Omnibrain on his good fortune... :-p My three highlights as usual:

- Brain Blogger brings us a short piece on serotonin: specifically, how the genetic basis of the serotonin system, and the natural variation in the system as a result of individual genetic differences, results in different susceptibilities to anxiety, depression etc. Possibly also responsible for certain differences in personalities (seems sensible to me, but then I imagine that there are many drivers for ones personality). The interesting question then arises though of whether medicine should be used to make up for some of these individual differences. A fascinating question, whose answer has wide ranging consequences.

- Are birth defects the result of traumas that the mother has been subject to? This question with a seemingly obvious negatory answer is tackled by Vaughan over at Mind Hacks. The theory known as 'maternal impression' was well known in the 19th century, but passed out of use in the late 19th century. However, in the second half of the 20th century, a number of studies showed that severe maternal stress did have an effect on the children's brain development. Vaughans article is well worth the read.

- And finally, the question of Free-Will! PsyBlog reviews three fascinating studies on how manipulating people's views on free-will (by getting them to read statements either for or against the concept of free-will) led to their behaviours being modified. A decreased belief in free will led to people being less helpful towards others, and even increased agression! Which leads to a view that a belief in free will is beneficial to society. The concepts free-will and determinism (as promoted by science) must however be reconciled since our society is fundamentally based on the former, and increasingl on the latter.

Special Issue on Arousal, Alertness and Attention

I recently came across a special issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences on Molecular and Biophysical Mechanisms of Arousal, Alertness, and Attention. It is May's issue, but for some reason, my alerting mechanism only told me about it on Monday. It's split into four main sections: (1) Elementary Central Nervous System Arousal; (2) The Emotion-Cognition Interface (which I think look particularly interesting); (3) Alertness and Attention; and (4) Circadian Rhythms in the Activation of Behavior (with a main emphasis on sleep). Anyways, some details in case of interest:

Issue 1129 - Table of Contents
Molecular and Biophysical Mechanisms of Arousal, Alertness, and Attention
DOI: 10.1196/annals.1417.034

Excerpt from preface:

"The volume starts with the most primitive function, generalized arousal, and then considers disorders of this function that cause comatose or vegetative states. After a series of chapters on emotion, alertness and attention, we finish with chapters on one of the most dynamic areas in neuroscience: sleep and circadian rhythms. "

On cognition

A while ago now, Andy at Figural Effect posted a concise summary (by way of quotations) of four definitions of 'Cognition' from researchers in different disciplines: Williamson, LeDoux, Clark & Grush, and Neisser. Because I see the Clark & Grush definition as more clearly defining a computationally implementable framework (as I've discussed previously), I find this one the more appealing, however, as noted by Andy, the views from different disciplines is interesting to note.

Related to this, and as mentioned in the comments of the Figural Effect post, is an interesting compilation of definitions of intelligence as viewed from psychology, AI, and others. Personally though, the view of intelligence given by H.G. Wells in 'The Time Machine' is possibly the most elegant I have seen.

Encephalon #52

The 52nd issue of Encephalon has now been put up at Ouroboros. With a nice Q&A layout, it covers the usual wide range of subjects, from neurogenesis to grannies, and from perception to culture. A couple of, in my view, the most interesting:

- From Neurophilosophy, a review of a paper on brain plasticity, particularly the visual cortex: visual experience can modulate the production of proteins which can influence plasticity along the visual pathway.

- From Neuroscientifically Challenged comes a look at the reason for sleep, and how the humble fruit fly has helped to shed some light on the problem.

- Finally, from Neuroanthropology is a lengthy review of a paper which lays the foundation of "cultural neuroscience": the influence of cultural and social factors on neural mechanisms, and how this may be taken into account in neuroimaging studies. My first thought though when reading this was that it would then be of more immediate concern to somehow account for individual differences in bodily morphology and individual personal histories - these, I would suggest, would have a more direct influence on development, and hence present neural mechanisms, than cultural influences - even though these are, as evidenced by this paper, obviously present. But then again, I'm not a neuroscientist, and have not studied the paper in great detail yet, so may have missed something.

The Inseparability of Emotion and Cognition

A paper on how emotion and cognition should not really be considered as separate entities, but as integrated - a move away from functional specialisations in the brain, and towards widespread interaction and integration for the production of behaviour. Abstract:

The current view of brain organisation supports the notion that there is a considerable degree of functional specialisation and that many regions can be conceptualised as either 'affective' or 'cognitive'. Popular examples are the amygdala in the domain of emotion and the lateral prefrontal cortex in the case of cognition. This prevalent view is problematic for a number of reasons. Here, I will argue that complex cognitive-emotional behaviours have their basis in dynamic coalitions of networks of brain areas, none of which should be conceptualised as specifically affective or cognitive. Central to cognitive-emotional interactions are brain areas with a high degree of connectivity, called hubs, which are critical for regulating the flow and integration of information between regions.

Reference: Pessoa L (2008) On the relationship between emotion and cognition. Nat Rev Neurosci 9:148-158 - full text (may require subscription)