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...

Review of "How to Build a Bionic Man"

This was a Channel 4 documentary on a week or two ago (I believe it's still viewable for those based in the U.K.) - I wasn't going to write a review of it at first. But then today, I noticed that there was a review of it on  the IEEE Robotics and Automation blog.

My first opinions of the documentary were unrelentingly poor. As a programme as a whole, I thought it was awful (the mostly inane voice-over commentary didn't help) - the thread that supposedly holds this together is the goal "...to create the worlds first bionic man, that can get off the slab and walk among us" (approx 1:10 minutes in). In terms of robotics it was dire: misleading, decidedly not state of the art, and poorly executed (as is typical for programmes such as this, it both over and understates the current state-of-the-art in robotics). As for 'building a bionic man', it was rather pathetic, an excuse to get in the dodgy sci-fi to make it more 'popular', and ending up with sensationalist nonsense. I can well imagine a director throughout in the background shouting "ham it up for the camera!" rather a lot...

However, the positive I did draw out of it (and this is what the IEEE blog post reminded me of) was that as a commentary on synthetic body parts, there is much of interest. The overview of the technologies both available and under development for the replacement of a whole host of limbs (in the news again recently) and internal organs was genuinely interesting, and quite well done. I thought the synthetic heart was particularly striking for instance.

The role of Bertolt Meyer was to add the personal touch to the tech-talk. For this, apart from the seemingly over-egged reaction to seeing a copy of his face on the resulting machine and the bit where he is pretending to talk to a plastic skull (though for all I know these were genuine reactions...), he was an ideal foil, being the user (possibly not the right phrase here) of a prosthetic hand himself. The snippets of interviews with the developers of the respective protheses were informative and realistic (i.e. didn't seem to be creatively edited in a way that detracted from the real technological advances made by focusing on the trivial or controversial).

It's a shame that the programme seems so poorly executed (and it is the programme I have a problem with), as there's lots of really great stuff that's been put together that doesn't, in my view, get the credit and clarity it deserves. And I can't imagine that the guys at Shadow Robot are particularly enamored at being portrayed as the stereotypical mad scientist loons confined to a basement, as they do genuinely great work (their hand is really quite impressive, and being used in a number of research endeavors around the world).

Sorry for somewhat rant-ish nature of that - I was possibly a little harsh in places, but as may be apparent, I don't think much of this documentary. I think that it mixes concepts from robotics, artificial intelligence and prosthetics research in a way that actually detracts from each, and is done from the perspective of entertainment under the guise of being informative.

Uncertainty in Science

Just came across an interesting article on Wired: Science today. Written by Stuart Firenstein, a biological scientist and active in the public understanding of science. It's on how uncertainty and doubt are actually good things, fundamental drivers of the scientific method; and not something to be brushed under the carpet or made out to indicate complete certainty or ignorance as it frequently is by politicians and activists on all sides of a politically charge argument, or jumped on by the media (e.g. the MMR jab fiasco a few years ago) .

Taking the hot topic (hehe...) of of global warming as an example, Firenstein notes that the lack of clear-cut, unambiguous answers isn't an indication that science cannot provide anything of utility in the debate, and should not be discarded as a result: " Revision is a victory in science, and that is precisely what makes it so powerful." . If science is the search for knowledge, then what is often overlooked is that newly acquired knowledge is a means for forming and framing new questions; each step is just that, and not a certain end in itself.

A little extract:
"We live in a complex world that depends on sophisticated scientific knowledge. That knowledge isn’t perfect and we must learn to abide by some ignorance and appreciate that while science is not complete it remains the single best method humans have ever devised for empirically understanding the way things work."
From http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/firestein-science-doubt/

World's smallest frog discovered

The story on the BBC News website that the world's smallest frog has been discovered. Really? Wow!

Smallest frog? Picture from the BBC News story.

/rant

No!! Have they taken a measurement and not bothered to look up the standard measurements of other frogs? Are they now certain that there are no more species of frog that could ever be found? Perhaps even they have discovered some theoretical reason why a frog could never possibly be smaller? Maybe I'm being overly pedantic, but surely it should be (along the lines of) "a new species of frog has been discovered, which is now the smallest known species of frog". I doubt such a claim would be in a peer reviewed paper, so maybe this is just sloppy wording to maximise 'impact' on the website...

/endrant

Me: films and robots

My first post in over a year, so lets start with something silly :-)

I'm sure that anyone who is working, or has worked, with robots has been influenced in some way (if not inspired) by some depiction in a work of fiction - most likely film - whether they choose to admit it or not (those who don't are probably lying). I'm quite happy to admit to this - and can point to two such robotic intelligent devices. What precisely about them gave rise to this influence I don't know - and I don't really want to deconstruct it in case it turns out to be ridiculous and/or trivial - but here they are nonetheless for you to assess.

Johnny 5 is alive!

The first one is the amazing - and actually fairly realistic (in terms of achievable mechanical complexity) - Johnny 5 from Short Circuit. I can't really say enough about this dude - I did really want one of the little mini-me's from the second film though! I can't really remember the first time I watched this, but I do know that over the many occasions I've watched the films I'm still drawn to it, despite the occasionally dodgy special effects (I'm thinking of the dancing)... 

The second one is the intelligent space-ship/robot arm thing in the Flight of the Navigator - 'Max'. I'm not entirely if this is supposed to be AI robot, or alien-being-controlling-a-robot, but any device that can fly a spaceship, go manic, and time-travel is alright in my book. The single eye-on-an-arm-thing was a bit strange, though even with such a fairly simple setup, the array of emotional expression was really quite impressive.

(I've only just realised that both of these films were released in '86 - this is just coincidence, as I watched both on TV a number of years afterwards - I didn't watch them in the cinema or anything). I'm not sure sure these would be the choices of most people - and I'm not going to bring age into it - but they're mine :-)

/rant
Having said all that though, there is a bit of a cautionary note I think. As much as the portrayal of the robot in science fiction is of course hugely beneficial in terms of building and maintaining interest in these synthetic devices, I do wonder sometimes whether this actually has the long-term reverse effect: building expectations of what such devices can do, not just beyond that which is currently possible, but beyond that which is even probable as possible. In the end, would this just not turn people off when they realise that the real state-of-the-art is actually fairly mundane? Or that what people like me think of as really quite exciting in terms of development just pale in comparison with the vividly recreated imaginations of script writers and graphic designers? In the end, surely such levels of unfulfilled expectation will serve as a damper on funding initiatives (am thinking of potential career prospects here...!) - "but what you are trying to do isn't really exciting, they were talking about it in the '70s/'80's/'90's/etc...". Either that, or the reality drifts so far from expectation that most people don't understand what's going on, and you end up in the same place. But that is perhaps for another discussion, on public engagement with science...

Or maybe I'm reading far too much into all of this, and should really just sit back, relax, and enjoy the view...

/endrant

What's the point of having evidence..

... if it's not going to be used, or ignored because it doesn't match the current state of public opinion.

Sometimes it's frankly just embarrassing...

The removal of a few lines from a piece of paper (admittedly legislation) is going to remove the requirement for formal scientific advice in the determination of drug policy in the U.K. (noted though that it doesn't necessarily mean that no scientists will form part of the relevant committee - but it's surely not a good sign: these are politicians we're talking about.) I would have hoped that the change in government might have meant that 'squabbles' of the past may have been left there - but then the idea that government policy could be challenged by people who know more than politicians would be worrying for anyone in power, whatever their political persuasion. Besides, the manipulation of evidence (and statistics) to serve political ends is hardly new is it - except that now it can technically be done without the evidence in the first place.

Oh well, only another 4 years until the next opportunity to register displeasure at the ballot box...

Robotic companions in the news

There was a minor flurry of media activity a week or so ago concerning the ALIZ-E project, just after the university put out a press release:

-> "Robot Companions to Befriend Sick Kids at European Hospital" in the IEEE Spectrum magazine.

-> "Cyber Sensitive: Therapeutic Buddy Bots Get Emotional" in Scientific American.

-> And a bit closer to home, is "Robots developed in Plymouth to befriend sick children" on the BBC Devon News website.

In a somewhat surreal event, we were also invited for a radio interview, in which our Nao robot was a speaking guest!

There seems to be a common picture with all of these stories (probably because it appears on the ALIZ-E project homepage) - at least it's a good one :-)

Reinforcement Learning illustrated...

Friends always seems to be on television here, several times a day, every day of the week. Once they reach the end, the whole thing is shown again from the beginning. I was watching an episode this evening, and this little gem of a quote came up:

Ross: I'm really impressed that you were able to memorize all this so quickly.
Joey: I'm an actor. I can memorize anything. Last week I had to say "Frontal Temporal Zygomatic Craniotomy."
Ross: Wow, what does that mean?
Joey: No idea. But the guy I said it to dies in the next scene, so I guess it means, you're going to get eaten by a bear.

From the episode "The one with the fertility test", you can see the clip here (at about 7mins).

Robotics walking aid

This looks interesting, even if a tad uncomfortable...

I did a (very) quick google search on it - why is it so difficult to any information on things that haven't been digested through multiple news corporations? The Honda website provides a few more details though.

The Animat project at Reading University

As reported on the BBC news website (and now many other news channels), and as subsequently nicely summarised by Mo at Neurophilosophy, the Animat project at the University of Reading aims to use a biological neuron culture to not just control a mobile robot, but also to receive sensory signals (in this case from 4 sonar sensors) from the robot - thus a closed loop system. The work is being done by CIRG (of which I am a part), in collaboration with the Pharmacy department, and hopes to allow the the biological neuronal culture to learn control of the mobile robot through the feedback mechanism in order to produce meaningful real-world behaviours - such as obstacle avoidance for example.

The official press release is here, and further information can be found here.

Sense about Science

Something I blogged about over a year ago, I've just noticed that the Sense about Science campaign (which is a charitable trust "promoting good science and evidence in public debates") has a leaflet "...to help people to query the status of science and research reported in the media". As well as this, they've produced a button which links to it:

Hopefully, it will help prevent this sort of thing (from Jan 2007)...

Hemispherical 'electronic eye' - and some implications...

The BBC News website yesterday reported on the development of a camera with a hemispheric detection surface, rather than the traditional 2D array. The paper on which this article is based (in Nature - link) proposes that this new technology will enable devices with "...a wide field of view and low aberrations with simple, few-component imaging optics", including bio-inspired devices for prosthetics purposes, and biological systems monitoring. This figure from the paper gives a very nice overview of the construction and structural properties of the system. Note that the individual sensory detectors are the same shape throughout - it is the interconnections between them which are modified. Abstract:

The human eye is a remarkable imaging device, with many attractive design features. Prominent among these is a hemispherical detector geometry, similar to that found in many other biological systems, that enables a wide field of view and low aberrations with simple, few-component imaging optics. This type of configuration is extremely difficult to achieve using established optoelectronics technologies, owing to the intrinsically planar nature of the patterning, deposition, etching, materials growth and doping methods that exist for fabricating such systems. Here we report strategies that avoid these limitations, and implement them to yield high-performance, hemispherical electronic eye cameras based on single-crystalline silicon. The approach uses wafer-scale optoelectronics formed in unusual, two-dimensionally compressible configurations and elastomeric transfer elements capable of transforming the planar layouts in which the systems are initially fabricated into hemispherical geometries for their final implementation. In a general sense, these methods, taken together with our theoretical analyses of their associated mechanics, provide practical routes for integrating well-developed planar device technologies onto the surfaces of complex curvilinear objects, suitable for diverse applications that cannot be addressed by conventional means.

From the cognitive/developmental robotics point of view, this sort of sensory capability has (to my mind) some pretty useful implications. Given that the morphology of the robots concerned, and that would include the morphology of the sensory systems, take central importance in the development (or learning) that the robot may perform, then these more 'biologically plausible' shapes may allow better comparisons to be made between robotic agent models and animals. Furthermore, from the morphological computation point of view (e.g. here, and here), this sort of sensory morphology may remove the need for a layer of image pre-processing - motion parallax for example. As seen in flighted insects, the shape of the eye and arrangements of the individual visual detectors upon it remove the need for complex transformations when the insect is flying through an environment - an example of how morphology reduces 'computational load'. If effects similar to these can be taken advantage of in cognitive and developmental robotics research, then a greater understanding and functionality may be gained. The development of this type of camera may be an additional step in this direction.

Science and Engineering as Art

From the BBC news website (again...) is a short opinion piece by Mark Miodownik, head of the Materials Research Group at King's College London, who (as seems to be all too common these days) bemoans the lack of development of young scientists/researchers/engineers in present day Britain. Pointing as many others do towards flaws in the education system, and a lack of willing among commercial enterprises to put money into keeping people in science (rather than letting them be tempted by the larger salaries available in other lines of work), he makes a comparison between science and art, which is new to me, but which I rather like:

"Science is like poetry in this respect: it is an expression of something sublime. Engineering likewise is an expression of human emotions and passions - cars, hip replacements and even washing machines are as much expressions of our soul as paintings, literature and music."

On Synaesthesia, by a synaesthete

I just found a short piece on the BBC news website on living, and growing up, with Synaesthesia, written by James Wannerton, president of the UK Synaesthesia Association, and himself a synaesthete (with taste associations). I personally am fascinated by synaesthesia, for all sorts of reasons, and this piece only enhances that by providing a personal view on how it affects ones life (for better and worse) rather than a discussion from the impersonal perspective of a neuroscience paper. An extract or two:

"...I found my word/taste associations having an increasing effect in my
everyday life, subtly dictating the nature and course of my friendships,
personal relationships, my education, my career, where I live, what I wear, what
I read, the make and colour of car that I drive. The list is endless.
...
What is beyond doubt is that I would never consider the option of being
cured, if ever such a thing were offered, although it would interest me to find
out how my perceptions would be altered if I "lost" it for a day. "

Link to the story

UK off-shore wind energy

Debate on wind energy on "The Politics Show" - BBC1 mid-day Sunday 9th December

I'm interested (like everyone else on the planet) in the renewable energy debate, so when I saw a special report on tomorrow's announcement on new planning laws to facilitate the implementation of off-shore wind farms around the coast of Great Britain, I was interested, and took a few (very brief) brief notes, which are reproduced below. Being "The Politics Show", all the arguments naturally revolved around political and public opinion issues, with no mention of technical issues - the closest they got to that was a (perfectly valid, in my view) question regarding an over-reliance of the national grid on wind-energy: what happens if the wind stops for a long period of time (e.g. a week)?? Interesting nonetheless...

Report on off-shore wind power:
- Expansion of offshore wind farms - new planning laws to be announced tomorrow.
- 20% EU target for renewable energy production by 2020.
- Significant obstacles to this happening.
- However, very expensive for the amount of energy produced.
- Consumers will pick up the tab for offshore wind for subsidies - in addition to the already existing subsidies for on-land wind farms.
- RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) also has concerns regarding sea-birds and migration routes.

Interview with John Hutton (Government business minister):
- Must facilitate shift to low-carbon use, and ability for Britain to supply own energy (and in a clean way.
- How much will be generated: all electricity used by households in the UK if all of the resources round the coast is used.
- 1GW from offshore at moment => want 34GW in 12 years (!)
- No single technology will solve energy problems, but wind power will be a major part.
- The choices can't be postponed - decision must be made now.
- The planning laws are changed with announcement tomorrow- at end of day, it will be private companies who will actually build the turbines.
- There will mean increases in costs for the consumer.
- What about over-reliance on wind: stressed need for a balanced approach to energy production.
- Will 20% target be met? No - not by 2020.

Interview with Alan Duncan (Conservative energy brief):
- Largely agrees with announcement. The coastline should be used.
- Electricity prices will go up: yes, but stability of carbon based fuels not guaranteed in the future, and it the difference in cost between renewables and carbon-based energy production which is of importance.
- Both bottom-up and top-down energy policies needed: both - Nuclear energy needs to be part of the energy mixture - though without subsidies.

Encephalon #31

The thirty-first edition of Encephalon is up at Dr. Deb. It has been since Monday, but I've only just got round to reading it. A good one as usual, and this one even starts with a picture of Spock... :-) There are three contributions to this edition which I found particularly interesting:

- Vaughan at Mind Hacks brings us a look at the psychology of believing news reports. Case studies are reviewed in support of the view that if false information is presented first it is likely to be believed, even in the face of subsequent corrections - indeed, these corrections may even embed the incorrect initially provided information (perhaps through the effect by which repeated information is more likely to be believed). The implications of this effect is quite wide ranging as pointed out by Vaughan: "As I'm sure these principles are already widely known among government and commercial PR departments, bear them in mind when evaluating public information."

- From Neurobiotaxis comes a review of the "Triune brain" theory, espoused by Paul MacLean. This theory of brain evolution proposes the well known three "layers" (for want of a better word on my part) of brain organisation, from the evolutionary primitive structures of the spinal cord and brain stem, through the midbrain structures of the limbic system, to the cerebral cortex, which is proposed as the most advanced structure in evolutionary terms. The post deals with it in terms of affective neuroscience, and asks the question whether the "triune brain" view is appropriate and relevant as a major theory. The conclusion after very detailed discussion (it took me a while to take in all the information) is essentially no, but it is noted that in the area of emotional behaviour, it is still defended by some (though at times as a useful conceptualisation rather than a prediction-producing model). A good read.

- Finally, a post on Synaesthesia by Mo at Neurophilosophy, particularly the recently discovered mirror-touch synaesthesia. After a review of the neuropsychological basis of synaesthesia (possibly by excess cross-modal neural connectivity, or by impaired inhibition across regions), MTS is introduced as a condition whose 'carriers' experience tactile information when they see another person being touched. Synaesthesia has long been something I have been interested in, partly as an example of how (if one ascribes to the cross-modal connections view) an 'error' in the development of the brain doesn't lead to impaired performance of any sort, and in some cases quite the opposite - demonstrating the amazing flexibility of the system that is the brain.

Mind Games

A story on the BBC appeared yesterday discussing the rise of the "brain training" computer game. I'm sure that everyone by now has seen those Nintendo DS adverts for that brain training game with Nicole Kidman in it that seems to be absolutely everywhere. They have been around for a while - although it seems as though only recently has it turned into a "fad". I particularly like the following sentence in the BBC article, which I think sums up this sentiment nicely:

"As if the gym was not tyranny enough, now there's another fitness routine
that's playing on the insecurities of the masses - the brain workout."

You would expect games companies to take whichever angle they can in order to sell more games, by using emotional blackmail perhaps by saying its for your (and your childrens...) wellbeing. But now Baroness Susan Greenfield, an eminant member of the Royal Society (if my memory serves me correctly), is fronting the MindFit family of mental games/exercises. I can't comment on the cognitive benefits of such software because I don't know enough about it, but I would have thought that if it were that genuinely good for your mental health, it would be freeware. But it's not (allthough of course I can see many reasons why it isn't).

Anyways, SharpBrains might be an interesting place to look for further information on "brain exercises" in general.

The biochemistry of memory

From a post at Neurophilosophy:

Found a series of links over at Neurophilosophy to five articles written on the subject of memory (at Chemical and Engineering News), particularly the biochemistry aspects. Not read the articles fully myself yet (just a quick skim so far), but look very interesting at the very least:

- Hold that thought
- Molecules for memory
- The well-endowed mind
- Memory at its worst
- Sleep anchors memory

Crows and Tools

The BBC News website has reported on another study involving the New Caledonian crows originating from a few small islands in the Pacific ocean (picture above from BBC news story). This species came to light with the famous experiments at Oxford University (by Kacelnik and associates) on Betty and Abel, which showed their ability not only to use tools, but also to fashion them from non-tool and non-naturally occurring materials. These abilities had previously only been observed in humans and some primates.

The present study looked at 'meta-tool use' by this species. Meta-tool use is the ability to use one tool on another to achieve the desired state/goal. Seven wild crows were used in the experiment, with the following setup: a crow was presented with a box in which there was food. It was also provided with a stick, which by itself was not long enough to get the food. Another box was also present, in which there was a longer stick. The solution to getting the food is then to use the short stick to get the long stick, and the long stick to get the food from the first box: meta-tool use. The results showed not only that the crows were able to to this, but that this performance was achieved in the first trial (in 6 out of 7 subjects) – see the paper abstract below. As suggested by the paper, this indicates that the crows abstracted from, or used in some other way, information that had been previously learned to a novel situation – an not merely through trial and error.

This being a domain traditionally the preserve of humans, if found to be verifiable/replicable (from my understanding, this is the only study conducted of its type), the results could have a wide variety of implications in a number of fields. As I understand it, the learning and abstraction capabilities of the higher primates are explained by the 'closeness' in brain structure between humans and these animals: that it is the human brain that is capable of these feats, and that primates have limited capabilities due to similarities. The brain of the bird, in this case New Caledonian crow, however I assume to bear very little similarity by comparison. In this case, it would not be the structure which is important (not necessarily anyway), but some other property. I'm hardly intimate with the details of the study (or indeed the neuroanatomy of these crows), but I view it as an interesting issue: I'm thinking here of Fuster's Network Memory theory, of which, while being a model of the human information processing system, the underlying principles I assume may be equally applied to any neurally-based nervous system, including that of the crow (the detailed accounts of the specific brain regions in the Network Memory theory, particularly the prefrontal cortex, would naturally not apply – but perhaps this functionality may be physically represented in some other, limited, way?). Of course, these last thoughts are pure speculation on my part – perhaps some of your comments could help me untangle my thoughts?...

Abstract:

A crucial stage in hominin evolution was the development of metatool use—the ability to use one tool on another [1] and [2]. Although the great apes can solve metatool tasks [3] and [4], monkeys have been less successful [5], [6] and [7]. Here we provide experimental evidence that New Caledonian crows can spontaneously solve a demanding metatool task in which a short tool is used to extract a longer tool that can then be used to obtain meat. Six out of the seven crows initially attempted to extract the long tool with the short tool. Four successfully obtained meat on the first trial. The experiments revealed that the crows did not solve the metatool task by trial-and-error learning during the task or through a previously learned rule. The sophisticated physical cognition shown appears to have been based on analogical reasoning. The ability to reason analogically may explain the exceptional tool-manufacturing skills of New Caledonian crows.

Life, Consciousness, and Brain Evolution

The February issue of Discover Magazine (07/03/07) carries an interview with Gerald Edelman, Nobel prize winner (for work on the structure of antibodies), and founder/director of the Neurosciences Institute. In this interview, conducted by Susan Kruglinski, he discusses his views on consciousness and the work he, and collaborators, are conducting with robots to shed more light on its mysteries. In doing so, the concept of life and the evolution of the brain is also briefly discussed.

From the outset of the interview, Edelman states his belief that consciousess can be created in artificial systems. He does, however, make a distinction between living conscious artefacts and non-living conscious artefacts. He takes 'living' to be "the process of copying DNA, self-replication, under natural selection". Anything with these properties is a living system - all else is not. Consciousness created in an artificial system would then be fundamentally different from our own (human) consciousness - although he does say that he would personally treat is as though it were alive: accord it the same basic respect ("...I'd feel bad about unplugging it.").

When it comes to giving a definition of what consciousness is, Edelman starts by turning to proprties described by the psychologist and philosopher William James: (1) its the thing you lose when you fall into a deep dreamless sleep, which you regain when you wake up, (2) it's continuous and changing, and (3) it's modulated or modified by attention, and so not exhaustive. From this, Edelman describes two states of consciousness. The first is primary consciousness. This supposedly arose with the evolution of a neuronal structure which allowed an interaction between perceptual categorisation and memory. In this way an internal scene could be created which could be linked to past scenes (i.e. memory). Built on this is secondary consciousness - resulting from the development of another neural structure (or structures, which is apparent in humans, and to a certain extent in chimps), which enabled conceptual systems to be connected: enabling the development of semantics and "true language", resulting in higher-order consciousness. A more simplified view of this consciousness is that it requires the inernalistion of stimuli, the remembering of them, and the interactions of these processes (not only perception and memory, but also things such as emotion). From this theory of consciousness, Edelman says that its further understanding would allow a clearer picture of how knowledge is acquired, which has importance in many diffenent respects.

It is based on this view of consciousness that he describes the Neuroscience Institute's approach to understanding consciousness. They construct what are described as Brain Based Devices (BBD's), which are essentially robots with simulated nervous systems. This artificial nervous system is modelled on that of a vertebrate or mammalian brain - although of course the number of neurons and synaptic connections in the simulated are many orders of magnitude smaller than in their natural counterparts. Nonetheless, one of their BBD's, called Darwin VII, is capable of undergoing conditioning: learning to associate objects in its environment with 'good' or 'bad' taste (where these 'tastes' have been defined a priori as fundamental properties of the environment). An important point regarding this experimentation is that it was conducted using real physical robots in the 'real world' (albeit simplified for the purpose of the task, it wasn't a simulation environment). Edeleman points out that a big problem with simulated environments is the difficulty of replicating reality, or in his words: "...you can't trace a complete picture of the environment." As demonstrated by the conditioning experiment, these BBD's are capable of learning: an example given in the interview of a segway-football match between a BBD-segway, and one programmed using 'traditional' AI techniques. Five matches were played, and the BBD-based device won each time. Edelman puts this down to the learning capabilities, and behavioural flexibility, from the fact that it learned all actions, rather than merely implement a set of algorithms (as a 'traditional AI' system does).

The BBD's being controlled by artificial nervous systems leads to questions regarding specifics of implementation. Instead of individually simulating the million or so neurons that make up the simulated nervous system, it is actually groups of around 100 neurons being simulated together, with the mean firing rate for this sub-populaion being taken (mean firing-rate models). This average firing rate is a reflection of synaptic change. According to Edelman, this sort of response is not just biologically plausible, it is identical: "The responses are exactly like those of [biological] neurons" (square brackets added).

The final part of the interview looks at other work going on at the institute. Currently, work is progressing on Darwin 12, the latest incarnation of the BBD's. This version is new as it intends to look at how embodiment affects the development of learning in the artificial nervous system, and its general functionality. It has both wheels and legs, and nearly 100 sensors in each of its legs. Mention is also made of other work concerning rhythm and melody as intrinsic human capabilities, more so than any other animal, and how this may have led to the development of language. This aspect of work seems to be only loosely brushed-over, so I do likewise.
I think that this interview, albeit reasonably short, covered a number of very interesting concepts on a wide range of subjects. However, I feel that it doesn't entirely succeed in bringing all of these elements together. An interesting read nonetheless.