A Human-Humanoid Interaction Through the Use of BCI for Locked-In ALS Patients Using Neuro-Biological Feedback Fusion.

This paper illustrates a new architecture for a human–humanoid interaction based on EEG-brain computer interface (EEG-BCI) for patients affected by locked-in syndrome caused by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). The proposed architecture is able to recognise users’ mental state accordingly to the biofeedback factor $\text {B}_{\text f}$ , based on users’ attention, intention, and focus, that is used to elicit a robot to perform customised behaviours. Experiments have been conducted with a population of eight subjects: four ALS patients in a near locked-in status with normal ocular movement and four healthy control subjects enrolled for age, education, and computer expertise. The results s…

A SOM/ARSOM Hierarchy for the Description of Dynamic Scenes

A neural architecture is presented, aimed to describe the dynamic evolution of complex structures inside a video sequence. The proposed system is arranged as a tree of self-organizing maps. Leaf nodes are implemented by ARSOM networks as a way to code dynamic inputs, while classical SOM's are used to implement the upper levels of the hierarchy. Depending on the application domain, inputs are made by suitable low level features extracted frame by frame of the sequence. Theoretical foundations of the architecture are reported along with a detailed outline of its structure, and encouraging experimental results.

Update of REVEL: A randomized, double-blind, phase III study of docetaxel (DOC) and ramucirumab (RAM; IMC-1121B) versus DOC and placebo (PL) in the second-line (2L) treatment of stage IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) including subgroup analysis of histology

3D models of humanoid soccer robot in USAR sim and robotics studio simulators

This paper describes our experience in the simulation of humanoid soccer robots using two general purposes 3D simulators, namely USARSim and Microsoft Robotics Studio. We address the problem of the simulation of a soccer match among two teams of small humanoid robots in the RoboCup Soccer Kid-Size Humanoid competitions. The paper reports the implementation of the virtual models of the Robovie-M humanoid robot platform in the two simulators. Robovie-M was the robot used by our team "Artisti" in the RoboCup 2006 competitions. This paper focuses on the procedures needed to implement the virtual models of the robot and in the details of the models. We describe experiments assessing the feasibi…

A brain inspired architecture for an outdoor robot guide

Learning high-level tasks through imitation

This paper presents the cognitive architecture Con-SCIS (Conceptual Space based Cognitive Imitation System), which tightly links low-level data processing with knowledge representation in the context of imitation learning. We use the word imitate to refer to the paradigm of program-level imitation: we are interested in the final effects of actions on objects, and not on the particular kinematic or dynamic properties of the motion. The same architecture is used both to analyze and represent the task to be imitated, and to perform the imitation by generalizing in novel and different circumstances. The implemented experimental scenario is a simplified two-dimensional world populated with vario…

Robot passes the mirror test by inner speech

Abstract The mirror test is a well-known task in Robotics. The existing strategies are based on kinesthetic-visual matching techniques and manipulate perceptual and motion data. The proposed work attempts to demonstrate that it is possible to implement a robust robotic self-recognition method by the inner speech, i.e. the self-dialogue that enables reasoning on symbolic information. The robot self-talks and conceptually reasons on the symbolic forms of signals, and infers if the robot it sees in the mirror is itself or not. The idea is supported by the existing literature in psychology, where the importance of inner speech in self-reflection and self-concept emergence for solving the mirror…

Artificial intelligence and robotics.

Toward Virtuous Machines: When Ethics Meets Robotics

In very few years, the rapid evolution in Robotics research will lead to the designing and developing of intelligent autonomous robots behaving like humans. Robots will become pervasive and soon become part of humans’ lives. Beyond the technological aspects, to reach these objectives, the researchers and the roboticists must propose novel theories and find how to implement them to allow robots to align with social, moral, and legal cues. Roboethics aims to discuss ethical problems related to the design and use of autonomous robots. It aims at defining the conduct codes to instill virtuous AI in robots. This paper aims to overview the available issues and the proposed approaches to face the …

Sensations and perceptions in CICEROBOT, a museum guide root

Perception Loop and Machine Consciousness

Simulating music with associative self-organizing maps

Abstract We present an architecture able to recognise pitches and to internally simulate likely continuations of partially heard melodies. Our architecture consists of a novel version of the Associative Self-Organizing Map (A-SOM) with generalized ancillary connections. We tested the performance of our architecture with melodies from a publicly available database containing 370 Bach chorale melodies. The results showed that the architecture could learn to represent and perfectly simulate the remaining 20% of three different interrupted melodies when using a context length of 8 centres of activity in the A-SOM. These promising and encouraging results show that our architecture offers somethi…

Learning problem solving skills from demonstration: An architectural approach

We present an architectural approach to learning problem solving skills from demonstration, using internal models to represent problem-solving operational knowledge. Internal forward and inverse models are initially learned through active interaction with the environment, and then enhanced and finessed by observing expert teachers. While a single internal model is capable of solving a single goal-oriented task, it is their sequence that enables the system to hierarchically solve more complex task. Activation of models is goal-driven, and internal ”mental” simulations are used to predict and anticipate future rewards and perils and to make decisions accordingly. In this approach intelligent …

Pose classification using support vector machines

In this work a software architecture is presented for the automatic recognition of human arm poses. Our research has been carried on in the robotics framework. A mobile robot that has to find its path to the goal in a partially structured environment can be trained by a human operator to follow particular routes in order to perform its task quickly. The system is able to recognize and classify some different poses of the operator's arms as direction commands like "turn-left", "turn-right", "go-straight", and so on. A binary image of the operator silhouette is obtained from the gray-level input. Next, a slice centered on the silhouette itself is processed in order to compute the eigenvalues …

Editorial: Consciousness in Humanoid Robots

Building a conscious robot is a grand scientific and technological challenge. Debates about the possibility of conscious robots and the related positive outcomes and hazards for human beings are today no longer confined to philosophical circles.

Machine Consciousness in CiceRobot, A Museum Guide Robot

A Neural Architecture for Segmentation and Modelling of Range Data

A novel, two stage, neural architecture for the segmentation of range data and their modeling with undeformed superquadrics is presented. The system is composed by two distinct neural stages: a SOM is used to perform data segmentation, and, for each segment, a multi-layer feed-forward network performs model estimation. The topology preserving nature of the SOM algorithm makes this architecture suited to cluster data with respect to sudden curvature variations. The second stage is designed to model and compute the inside-outside function of an undeformed superquadric in whatever attitude, starting form the (x, y, z) data triples. The network has been trained using backpropagation, and the we…

INTEGRAZIONE, AUTOADATTAMENTO E COSCIENZA ARTIFICIALE

Modeling and designing a robotic swarm: A quantum computing approach

Nature is a neverending source of inspiration for technology. Quantum physics suggests applications to- ward quantum computing. Swarms’ self-organization leads to robotic swarm developments. Here, quantum computing is applied to swarm robotics. We model local interactions with a quantum circuit, testing it on simulators and quantum computers. To relate local with global behavior, we develop a block matrix-based model. Diagonal sub-matrices contain information on single robots; off-diagonal sub-matrices are the pairwise interaction terms. Comparing different swarms means comparing different block matrices. Choosing initial values and computation rules for off-diagonal blocks (with a particul…

A BCI Teleoperated Museum Robotic Guide

Brain Computer Interface is a system that offers also a support to the patients with neuromuscular diseases as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. In this paper are presented some works with the aim to integrate brain computer interfaces and mobile robots. The two aim of this project are: (i) to test an improved BCI experience through the help of a physical robot, so that brain signals are stronger stimulate. (ii) to use a remote robot controlled by a highly paralyzed patient via a BCI through a friendly Graphic User. Some preliminary experiments are presented in this paper about one of the possible application: a robotic museum guide (PeopleBot and Pioneer3 robot), that can transmit remote visu…

Brain Controlled Architecture for Human-Human Interaction Mediated by a Humanoid Robot

This paper presents an Assistive social robots architecture designed for social interaction with humans, mediated by a humanoid robot. The architecture has been designed for being used by people with severe paralysis and the architecture has been tested by a user affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in a locked-in state. The system allows the patient to communicate with the stakeholders using a Brain Controlled Interface, based on Evoked Response Potentials (ERP), to express needing, feelings or writing phases. Stakeholders visualize messages sent by the patient on a GUI and use a tele operated humanoid robot as an avatar of them to extend their physical presence to interact with…

A vision agent for mobile robot navigation in time-variable environments

We present an architecture for mobile robot navigation based on Bayesian networks. The architecture allows a robot to plan the correct path inside an environment with dynamic obstacles. Interactions between the robot and the environment are based on a powerful vision agent. The results of simulations, showing the effectiveness of the approach, are described.

Embodied responses to musical experience detected by human bio-feedback brain features in a geminoid augmented architecture

Abstract This paper presents the conceptual framework for a study of musical experience and the associated architecture centred on Human-Humanoid Interaction (HHI). On the grounds of the theoretical and experimental literature on the biological foundation of music, the grammar of music perception and the perception and feeling of emotions in music hearing, we argue that music cognition is specific and that it is realized by a cognitive capacity for music that consists of conceptual and affective constituents. We discuss the relationship between such constituents that enables understanding, that is extracting meaning from music at the different levels of the organization of sounds that are f…

Multi-robot Interacting Through Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper addresses the issue of coordinating the operations of multiple robots in an indoor environment. The framework presented here uses a composite networking architecture, in which a hybrid wireless network, composed by commonly available WiFi devices, and the more recently developed wireless sensor networks. Such architecture grants robots to enhance their perceptive capabilities and to exchange information so as to coordinate actions in order to achieve a global common goal. The proposed framework is described with reference to an experimental setup that extends a previously developed robotic tour guide application in the context of a multi-robot application.

Un package di ottimizzazione per la riconfigurazione delle reti elettriche di distribuzione

The inner speech of the IDyOT

A Two Stage Neural Architecture for Segmentation and Superquadrics Recovery from Range Data

A novel, two stage, neural architecture for the segmentation of range data and their modeling with undeformed superquadrics is presented. The system is composed by two distinct neural networks: a SOM is used to perform data segmentation, and, for each segment, a multilayer feed-forward network performs model estimation.

A System for Simultaneous People Tracking and Posture Recognition in the context of Human-Computer Interaction

The paper deals with an artificial-vision based system for simultaneous people tracking and posture recognition In the context of human-computer Interaction. We adopt no particular assumptions on the movement of a person and on Its appearance, making the system suitable to several real-world applications. The system can be roughly subdivided Into two highly correlated phases: tracking and recognition. The tracking phase Is concerned with establishing coherent relations of the same subject between frames. We adopted the Condensation algorithm due to Its robustness In highly cluttered environments. The recognition phase adopts a modified elgenspace technique In order to classify between sever…

A Quantum Planner for Robot Motion

The possibility of integrating quantum computation in a traditional system appears to be a viable route to drastically improve the performance of systems endowed with artificial intelligence. An example of such processing consists of implementing a teleo-reactive system employing quantum computing. In this work, we considered the navigation of a robot in an environment where its decisions are drawn from a quantum algorithm. In particular, the behavior of a robot is formalized through a production system. It is used to describe the world, the actions it can perform, and the conditions of the robot’s behavior. According to the production rules, the planning of the robot activities is processe…

SOME CHALLENGES FOR EMOTIONAL AGENTS

Attention-Based Landmark Selection in Autonomous Robotics

This paper describes a robotic architecture that uses visual attention mechanisms for autonomous navigation in unknown indoor environments. A foveation mechanism based on a bottom-up attention system allows the robot to autonomously select landmarks, defined as salient points in the camera images. Landmarks are memorized in a behavioral fashion by coupling sensing and acting to achieve a representation that is view and scale independent. Selected landmarks are stored in a topological map. During the navigation a top-down mechanism controls the attention system to achieve robot localization. Experiments and results show that our system is robust to noise and odometric errors, being at the sa…

Knowledge Representation in Empathic Robots-Rappresentazione della conoscenza in robot empatici

In questo articolo si illustra l'architettura cognitiva di un robot umanoide basato sul paradigma della Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). L'approccio LSA consente la creazione e l'utilizzo di un spazio concettuale multi-dimensionale e data driven. Questo paradigma è un passo verso la simulazione di un comportamento emotivo di un robot che interagisce con gli umani. L'architettura è organizzata in tre aree principali: Subconcettuale, emotivo e comportamentale. La prima area elabora i dati percettivi provenienti dai sensori. La seconda area è lo "spazio concettuale di stati emotivi" che costituisce la rappresentazione sub-simbolica di emozioni. L'ultima area attiva un comportamento semantico la…

Pattern Reuse in the PASSI Methodology

Conceptual spaces for computer vision representations

A framework for high-level representations in computer vision architectures is described. The framework is based on the notion of conceptual space. This approach allows us to define a conceptual semantics for the symbolic representations of the vision system. In this way, the semantics of the symbols can be grounded to the data coming from the sensors. In addition, the proposed approach generalizes the most popular frameworks adopted in computer vision.

CiceRobot, a cognitive robot for museum tours

UnipaBCI a novel general software framework for brain computer interface

The increasing interest in Brain Computer Interface (BCI) requires new fast, reliable and scalable frameworks that can be used by researchers to develop BCI based high performance applications in efficient and fast ways. In this paper is presented "UnipaBCI", a general software framework for BCI applications based on electroencephalogra-phy (EEG) that can fulfill these new needs. A visual evoked potentials (VEP) application has also been developed using the proposed framework in order to test the modular architecture and the overall performance. Different types of users (beginners and experts in BCI) have been involved during the "UnipaBCI" experimental test and they have exhibited good and…

Conveying Audience Emotions Through Humanoid Robot Gestures to an Orchestra During a Live Musical Exhibition

In the last twenty years, robotics have been applied in many heterogeneous contexts. Among them, the use of humanoid robots during musical concerts have been proposed and investigated by many authors. In this paper, we propose a contribution in the area of robotics application in music, consisting of a system for conveying audience emotions during a live musical exhibition, by means of a humanoid robot. In particular, we provide all spectators with a mobile app, by means of which they can select a specific color while listening to a piece of music (act). Each color is mapped to an emotion, and the audience preferences are then processed in order to select the next act to be played. This dec…

An architecture for autonomous agents exploiting conceptual representations

An architecture for autonomous agents is proposed that integrates the functional and the behavioral approaches to robotics. The integration is based on the introduction of a conceptual level, linking together a subconceptual, behavioral, level, and a linguistic level, encompassing symbolic representation and data processing. The proposed architecture is described with reference to an experimental setup, in which the robot task is that of building a significant description of its working environment. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

A Reconfigurable Neural Environment on Active Networks

This paper proposes the deployment of a neural network computing environment on Active Networks. Active Networks are packet-switched computer networks in which packets can contain code fragments that are executed on the intermediate nodes. This feature allows the injection of small pieces of codes to deal with computer network problems directly into the network core, and the adoption of new computing techniques to solve networking problems. The goal of our project is the adoption of a distributed neural network for approaching tasks which are specific of the computer network environment. Dynamically reconfigurable neural networks are spread on an experimental wide area backbone of active no…

What robots want? Hearing the inner voice of a robot.

Summary The inner speech is thoroughly studied in humans, and it represents an interdisciplinary research issue involving psychology, neuroscience, and pedagogy. A few papers only, mostly theoretical, analyze the role of inner speech in robots. The present study investigates the potential of the robot's inner speech while cooperating with human partners. A cognitive architecture is designed and integrated with standard robot routines into a complex framework. Two threads of interaction are discussed by setting the robot operations with and without inner speech. Thanks to the robotic self-dialog, the partner can easily trace the robot's processes. Moreover, the robot can better solve conflic…

The Economic Metaphor of Italian Politics for the coordination of ERS-7 Robot in the Robocup Multi-Agent Environment

AGI and Machine Consciousness

This review discusses some of main issues to be addressed to design a conscious AGI agent: the agent’s sense of the body, the interaction with the environment, the agent’s sense of time, the free will of the agent, the capability for the agent to have some form of experience, and finally the relationship between consciousness and creativity.

Understanding dynamic scenes

We propose a framework for the representation of visual knowledge in a robotic agent, with special attention to the understanding of dynamic scenes. According to our approach, understanding involves the generation of a high level, declarative description of the perceived world. Developing such a description requires both bottom-up, data driven processes that associate symbolic knowledge representation structures with the data coming out of a vision system, and top-down processes in which high level, symbolic information is in its turn employed to drive and further refine the interpretation of a scene. On the one hand, the computer vision community approached this problem in terms of 2D/3D s…

ROBOTICA MOBILE UN'INTRODUZIONE PRATICA Edizione Italiana a cura di Antonio Chella e Rosario Sorbello

Questo libro costituisce una introduzione ai fondamenti e ai metodi della progettazione e della sperimentazione di robot autonomi mobili. La trattazione presenta in modo chiaro e rigoroso i temi centrali di questo complesso campo di ricerca: l'apprendimento e l'addestramento del robot; la navigazione autonoma in ambienti non modificati, soggetti a rumore e a eventi non prevedibili; l'analisi del comportamento del robot; il riconoscimento di novità percettive; la simulazione di robot reali. Tredici dettagliati casi di studio mostrano come progettare e programmare robot reali in grado di eseguire i compiti assegnati. Il libro rappresenta un riferimento per gli studenti dei corsi universitari …

Would a robot trust you? Developmental robotics model of trust and theory of mind

Trust is a critical issue in human - robot interactions: as robotic systems gain complexity, it becomes crucial for them to be able to blend into our society by maximizing their acceptability and reliability. Various studies have examined how trust is attributed by people to robots, but fewer have investigated the opposite scenario, where a robot is the trustor and a human is the trustee. The ability for an agent to evaluate the trustworthiness of its sources of information is particularly useful in joint task situations where people and robots must collaborate to reach shared goals. We propose an artificial cognitive architecture based on the developmental robotics paradigm that can estima…

Towards a design process for modeling MAS organizations

The design of MAS organizations is a complex activity where a proper methodological approach may offer a significant advantage in enabling the conception of the best solution. Moreover, the aid provided by a supporting tool significantly contributes to make the approach technically sound and it is a fundamental ingredient of a feasible strategy to the development of large MASs. In this paper, we introduce a portion of methodological approach devoted to design MAS organizations and a preliminary version of a specific case tool, named MoT (Moise+ Tool), for supporting activities from design production to automatic code generation. MoT provides four kinds of diagrams based on a definite graphi…

Reaching and Grasping a Glass of Water by Locked-In ALS Patients through a BCI-Controlled Humanoid Robot

Locked-in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) patients are fully dependent on caregivers for any daily need. At this stage, basic communication and environmental control may not be possible even with commonly used augmentative and alternative communication devices. Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology allows users to modulate brain activity for communication and control of machines and devices, without requiring a motor control. In the last several years, numerous articles have described how persons with ALS could effectively use BCIs for different goals, usually spelling. In the present study, locked-in ALS patients used a BCI system to directly control the humanoid robot NAO (Aldebar…

Grounded Human-Robot Interaction

Automation Inner Speech as an Anthropomorphic Feature Affecting Human Trust: Current Issues and Future Directions

This paper aims to discuss the possible role of inner speech in influencing trust in human–automation interaction. Inner speech is an everyday covert inner monolog or dialog with oneself, which is essential for human psychological life and functioning as it is linked to self-regulation and self-awareness. Recently, in the field of machine consciousness, computational models using different forms of robot speech have been developed that make it possible to implement inner speech in robots. As is discussed, robot inner speech could be a new feature affecting human trust by increasing robot transparency and anthropomorphism.

Innovative modelling techniques in computer vision

Abstract The paper is concerned with two of main research activities currently carried on at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence lab of DIE. The first part deals with hybrid artificial vision models, intended to provide object recognition and classification capabilities to an autonomous intelligen system. In this framework, a system recovering 3-D shape information from grey-level images of a scene, building a geometric representation of the scene in terms of superquadrics at the geometric level, and reasoning about the scene at the symbolic level is described. In the second part, attention is focused on automatic indexing of image databases. JACOB, a prototypal system allowing…

Tools and patterns in designing multi-agent systems with PASSI

Robot coscienti, realtà possibile o utopia? Cosa dicono gli studi

C’è un fervente dibattito scientifico attorno alla coscienza, continuamente ravvivato da chi è convinto di poterla emulare e da chi, al contrario, si dice certo che sia funzione unicamente biologica. Le ricadute degli studi che tendono a stabilirlo impattano anche sulla definizione del concetto di persona

Grounding ontologies in the external world

The paper discusses a case study of grounding an ontology in the external world by a cognitive architecture for robot vision developed at the RoboticsLab of the University of Palermo. The architecture aims at representing symbolic knowledge extracted from visual data related to static and dynamic scenarios. The central assumption is the principled integration of a robot vision system with a symbolic system underlying the knowledge representation of the scene. Such an integration is based on a conceptual level of representation intermediate between the sub-symbolic processing of visual data and the declarative style employed in the ontological representation.

Natural Human Robot Meta-communication through the Integration of Android's Sensors with Environment Embedded Sensors

Building robots that closely resemble humans allows us to study phenomena that cannot be studied using mechanical-looking robots in our daily human-to-human natural interactions. This is supported by the fact that human-like devices can more easily elicit the same kind of responses that people use in their natural interactions. However, several studies support the close and complex relationship existing between outer appearance and the behavior by the robot. Yet, human-like appearance, as Masahiro Mori observed, is not enough to give a positive impression. The robot has to behave closely to humans, and is to have a sense of perception that enables it to communicate with humans. Our past exp…

Towards a conceptual representation of actions

An autonomous robot involved in missions should be able to generate, update and process its own actions. It is not plausible that the meaning of the actionsus ed by the robot isgiv en form the outside of the system itself. Rather, this meaning should be anchored to the world through the perceptual abilitiesof the robot. We present an approach to conceptual action representation based on a "conceptual" level that actsasan intermediate level between symbolsand data coming form sensors. Symbolic representations are interpreted by mapping them on the conceptual level through a mapping mechanism based on artificial neural networks.

Learning through observation and imitation: An overview of the ConSCIS architecture

An Application of Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity to Readout Circuit for Liquid State Machine

Liquid state machine (LSM) is a neural system based on spiking neurons that implements a mapping between functions of time. A typical application of LSM is classification of time functions obtained observing the state of the liquid by using a memoryless readout circuit, usually implemented by a linear perceptron. Due to the high number of neurons in the liquid the training of the readout is difficult. In this paper we show that using the Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity (STDP) a single neuron with short training session can be used to recognize the state of the liquid due to an input signal. Using STDP it is possible to identify the spikes timing of the neurons in the liquid and this allow…

RoBotanic: a Robot Guide for Botanical Gardens. Early steps.

The Inner Life of a Robot in Human-Robot Teaming

Giving the robot a 'human' inner life, such as the capability to think about itself and to understand what the other team members are doing, would increase the efficiency of trustworthy interactions with the other members of the team. Our long-Term research goal is to provide the robot with a computational model of inner life helping the robot to reason about itself, its capabilities, its environment and its teammates. Robot inner speech is a part of the research goal. In this paper, we summarize the results obtained in this direction.

How to learn a conceptual space

the experiments proposed in the article by steels & belpaeme (s&b) can be considered as a starting point toward a general methodology for the automatic learning of conceptual spaces.

How to Extract Fragments from Agent Oriented Design Processes

Using Method Engineering for creating agent oriented design processes is a challenging task because of the lack of a fragment repository defined and filled starting from a shared and unique definition of fragment. The creation of a repository implies the fragmentation of existing agent design processes. In this paper we propose a set of guidelines for extracting fragments from agent design processes. The work is based on a precise definition of fragment and it aims to establish a method for fragmenting processes and obtaining homogeneous fragments regardless of how the starting design processes are defined and described. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.

An android architecture for bio-inspired honest signalling in Human-Humanoid Interaction

Abstract This paper outlines an augmented robotic architecture to study the conditions of successful Human-Humanoid Interaction (HHI). The architecture is designed as a testable model generator for interaction centred on the ability to emit, display and detect honest signals. First we overview the biological theory in which the concept of honest signals has been put forward in order to assess its explanatory power. We reconstruct the application of the concept of honest signalling in accounting for interaction in strategic contexts and in laying bare the foundation for an automated social metrics. We describe the modules of the architecture, which is intended to implement the concept of hon…

Jazz and machine consciousness: Towards a new turing test

A form of Turing test is proposed and based on the capability for an agent to produce jazz improvisations at the same level of an expert jazz musician.

CiceRobot: a cognitive robot for interactive museum tours

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to integrate perception, action and symbolic knowledge to allow an autonomous robot to operate in unstructured environments and to interact with non‐expert users.Design/methodology/approachTo achieve such goals, a cognitive robot architecture is proposed based on the integration between subsymbolic and linguistic computations through the introduction of an intermediate level of representation based on conceptual spaces.FindingsThe architecture has been tested in the CiceRobot project on tasks related to guided tours in the Archaeological Museum of Agrigento. Experimental results show that robot cognitive behaviors allow one to achieve a full functional roboti…

A Feed-Forward Neural Network for Robust Segmentation of Color Images

A novel approach for segmentation of color images is proposed. The approach is based on a feed-forward neural network that learns to recognize the hue range of meaningful objects. Experimental results showed that the proposed method is effective and robust even in presence of changing environmental conditions. The described technique has been tested in the framework of the Robot Soccer World Cup Initiative (RoboCup). The approach is fully general and it may be successfully employed in any intermediate level image-processing task, where the color is a meaningful descriptor.

A vision system for symbolic interpretation of dynamic scenes using arsom

We describe an artificial high-level vision system for the symbolic interpretation of data coming from a video camera that acquires the image sequences of moving scenes. The system is based on ARSOM neural networks that learn to generate the perception-grounded predicates obtained by image sequences. The ARSOM neural networks also provide a three-dimensional estimation of the movements of the relevant objects in the scene. The vision system has been employed in two scenarios: the monitoring of a robotic arm suitable for space operations, and the surveillance of an electronic data processing (EDP) center.

Modeling ontologies for robotic environments

On the basis of a multiple abstraction levels specification process, we developed a representational model for environmental robotic knowledge through the definition of a set of ontologies using a multi perspective approach. A general ontological model for typical indoor environments has been first developed, followed by its specialization using an implementation perspective. Actual software implementation of the ontology has been obtained via a XML-based markup language, used to build a repository for robotic environmental knowledge. Copyright 2002 ACM.

Time varying signals classification using a liquid state machine

The inner speech of the IDyOT: Comment on “Creativity, information, and consciousness: The information dynamics of thinking” by Geraint A. Wiggins

The comment on “Creativity, information, and consciousness: The information dynamics of thinking” by Geraint A. Wiggins

Architectural Scenes Reconstruction from Uncalibrated Photos and Map Based Model Knowledge

In this paper we consider the problem of reconstructing architectural scenes from multiple photographs taken from arbitrarily viewpoints. The original contribution of this work is the use of a map as a source of a priori knowledge and geometric constraints in order to obtain in a fast and simple way a detailed model of a scene. We suppose images are uncalibrated and have at least one planar structure as a facade for exploiting the planar homography induced between world plane and image to calculate a first estimation of the projection matrix. Estimations are improved by using correspondences between images and map. We show how these simple constraints can be used to calibrate the cameras, t…

A Design of Global Workspace Model with Attention: Simulations of Attentional Blink and Lag-1 Sparing

There are many developed theories and implemented artificial systems in the area of machine consciousness, while none has achieved that. For a possible approach, we are interested in implementing a system by integrating different theories. Along this way, this paper proposes a model based on the global workspace theory and attention mechanism, and providing a fundamental framework for our future work. To examine this model, two experiments are conducted. The first one demonstrates the agent’s ability to shift attention over multiple stimuli, which accounts for the dynamics of conscious content. Another experiment of simulations of attentional blink and lag-1 sparing, which are two well-stu…

Creation and cognition for humanoid live dancing

Abstract Computational creativity in dancing is a recent and challenging research field in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. We present a cognitive architecture embodied in a humanoid robot capable to create and perform dances driven by the perception of music. The humanoid robot is able to suitably move, to react to human mate dancers and to generate novel and appropriate sequences of movements. The approach is based on a cognitive architecture that integrates Hidden Markov Models and Genetic Algorithms. The system has been implemented on a NAO robot and tested in public setting-up live performances, obtaining positive feedbacks from the audience.

On a Roadmap to Biologically Inspired Cognitive Agents

A new challenge is proposed for future intelligent artifacts based on biologically inspired cognitive architectures (BICA), called the BICA Challenge. Namely, it is proposed that a BICA agent can only be considered human-level intelligent if it can be accepted and trusted as an equal member (a “person”) by a human community. For example, an agent of this sort would be able to win a political election against human candidates.

Adaptive strategy and High level Planning in the E-MIP Architecture

A Lightweight Software Architecture for Robot Navigation and Visual Logging through Environmental Landmarks Recognition

A robot architecture with real-time performance in navigation tasks is presented. The system architecture is multi-threaded with shared memory and fast message passing through static signalling. In this paper, we focused on the reactive layer components and its straightforward implementation. The proposed architecture is described with reference to an experimental setup, in which the robot task is visual logging of environmental landmarks detected on the basis of sensor readings. Our experimental results show how the robot is able to identify, make snapshots and log a set of landmarks by matching 2D geometric patterns.

An Approach for the Design of Self-conscious Agent for Robotics

Developing complex robotic systems endowed with self- conscious abilities and subjective experience is a hard requirement to face at design time. This paper deals with the development of robotic systems that do not own any a-priori knowledge of the environment they live in and proposes an agent-orientd design process for modelling and implementing such a systems by means of implementing the perception loop occurring between environment, body and brain during subjective experience. A case study dealing with a robocup setup is proposed in order to describe the design process activities and to illustrate the techniques for making the robot able to autonomously decide when an unknown situations…

Il Jazz e la Coscienza Artificiale

Cognitive Semantics and the Semantic Web

non disponibile

The economic metaphor of Italian politics for dynamic coalition regeneration in the robocup competition of Aibo robots

The variation version of the economic metaphor of Italian politics, an architecture that loosely takes inspiration from the political organizations of democratic governments, following the example of Italian government, and which provides a solution for the coordination of a spare colony of robots, is competent to allow the coordination of the behaviors of a team of four robots in order to play soccer in the Robocup competition. The development of an evolution of economic metaphor of Italian politics is now outlined. This new approach proposes a mechanism to make a new coalition caused by the failure of the government strategy and by a general inefficiency of the whole colony during the rea…

Metaphor of Politics: A Mechanism of Coalition Formation

Self-organizing maps: A new digital architecture

An original hardware architecture implementing the self-organizing feature maps, which is one of the most powerful and efficent neural network algorithm, is presented. The architecture, contrary to the most investigated hardware implementations of neural networks, is a full digital one and it may be easily built by using the standard VLSI techniques.

Capturing citizens — Emerging needs: Using social networks in smart cities

In order to reach its objectives, smart cities (or whatever kind of smart urban environment) should be underpinned by complex cyber physical systems (CPS) able to discover needs and services and "smartly" combine them. Services may be thought as services offered by software components, of whatever nature, for instance software, bot, robot, app and so on. Searching for the best service depends on the need of the citizen(s) and also on the type of (smart) environment the citizens are in. Analysis and design of CPSs are more challenging than the only physical or the only cyber system. We propose a design paradigm shift towards runtime for identifying requirements of cyber physical systems for …

E-MIP: A New Economic Approach for Multi-Robot Dynamic Coalition Regeneration in the Metaphor of Italian Politics

A robot aimed with consciousness?

L’articolo bersaglio di Falcone et al. (2018) prende spunto dal sag-gio di Kaplan (2017) e offre una rassegna ragionata sulle sfide che ci attendono nei prossimi anni dal punto di vista economico, sociale e tecnico, grazie alle nuove tecnologie basate sull’Intelligenza Artificiale. Un aspetto che riveste importanza in questo dibattito riguarda la co-scienza artificiale: infatti, Kaplan (ibidem, pp. 116-123) si chiede se un computer possa essere dotato di coscienza e se possa «sentire».

Attention-based environment perception in autonomous robotics

This paper describes a robotic architecture that uses visual attention mechanisms for autonomous navigation in unknown indoor environments. A foveation mechanism based on classical bottom-up gaze shifts allows the robot to autonomously select landmarks, defined as salient points in the camera images. Landmarks are memorized in a behavioral fashion, coupling sensing and acting to achieve a representation view and scale independent. Selected landmarks are stored in a topological map; during the navigation a top-down mechanism controls the attention system to achieve robot localization. Experiments and results show that our system is robust to noise and odometric errors, being at the same time…

The Computational Correlates of Artificial Qualia

Visual Control of a Robotic Hand

The paper deals with the design and implementation of a visual control of a robotic system composed of a dexterous hand and stereo cameras. The aim of the proposed system is to reproduce the movements of a human hand in order to learn complex manipulation tasks. A novelty algorithm for a robust and fast fingertips localization and tracking is presented. Moreover, a simulator is integrated in the system to give useful feedbacks to the users during operations, and provide robust testing framework for real experiments (see video).

An image retrieval system for artistic database on cultural heritage

A Playful Experiential Learning System With Educational Robotics

This article reports on two studies that aimed to evaluate the effective impact of educational robotics in learning concepts related to Physics and Geography. The reported studies involved two courses from an upper secondary school and two courses from a lower secondary school. Upper secondary school classes studied topics of motion physics, and lower secondary school classes explored issues related to geography. In each grade, there was an “experimental group” that carried out their study using robotics and cooperative learning and a “control group” that studied the same concepts without robots. Students in both classes were subjected to tests before and after the robotics laboratory, to c…

High-dimensional perceptual signals and synthetic phenomenology

Synthetic phenomenology, in the sense of Chrisley, mainly focuses on the analysis of simplified perceptual signals with small or reduced dimensionality. Instead, we claim that synthetic phenomenology should be analysed in terms of dynamic perceptual signals with huge dimensionality. We claim that forms of dimensionality reduction of the perceptual signals, as done e.g. in typical robot vision applications, are characteristics of automatic “unconscious” processing. An effective “conscious” process actually deals with and must exploit the richness of the perceptual signals coming from the retina. We explore the hypothesis of a high-resolution buffer for the visual process and we discuss an ap…

Patterns Reuse in the PASSI methodology

Design patterns already proved successful in lowering the development time and number of errors of object-oriented software; now, they are, candidate to play a similar role in the MAS (multi-agent system) context. In this work we describe our experiences in the identification, production and application of patterns for agents. Some patterns are described together with the classification criteria and documentation approach we adopt. Upon them, we base a pattern reuse process that can be considered one of the distinguishing elements of the design methodology (PASSI) we use to develop MAS. Patterns can be applied to an existing agent or used to produce a new one with the support of a specific …

Automatic place detection and localization in autonomous robotics

This paper presents an approach for the simultaneous learning and recognition of places applied to autonomous robotics. While noteworthy results have been achieved with respect to off-line training process for appearance-based navigation, novel issues arise when recognition and learning are simultaneous and unsupervised processes. The approach adopted here uses a Gaussian mixture model estimated by a novel incremental MML-EM to model the probability distribution of features extracted by image-preprocessing. A place detector decides which features belong to which place integrating odometric information and a hidden Markov model. Tests demonstrate that the proposed system performs as well as …

A System for simultaneous People Tracking and Posture Recognition in the context of Human-Robot Interaction

Sing with the Telenoid

We introduce a novel research proposal project aimed to build a robotic setup in which the Telenoid learns to improvise jazz singing in a duet with a human singer. In the proposed application, the Telenoid acts in teleoperated mode during the learning phase, while it becomes more and more autonomous during the working phase. A goal of the research is to investigate the essence of human communication which is based on gestures and prosody. We will employ an architecture for imitation learning that incrementally learns from demonstrations sequences of internal model activations, based on the idea of coupled forward- inverse internal models for representing musical phrases and the body sequenc…

A mechanism of coalition formation in the metaphor of politics multiagent architecture

Hybrid Multi-Agent Architectures allow the support of mobile robots colonies moving in dynamic, not predictable and time variable environments in order to achieve distributed solving strategies that develop collective team-oriented behaviors for solving complicate and difficult tasks. The development of a new robotic architecture for the coordination of a robot colonies in dangerous, unknown and dynamic environment is outlined. The name of this new architecture is Metaphor of Politics (MP), because it loosely takes inspiration from the political organizations of democratic governments.

A cognitive architecture for inner speech

Abstract A cognitive architecture for inner speech is presented. It is based on the Standard Model of Mind, integrated with modules for self-talking. Briefly, the working memory of the proposed architecture includes the phonological loop as a component which manages the exchanging information between the phonological store and the articulatory control system. The inner dialogue is modeled as a loop where the phonological store hears the inner voice produced by the hidden articulator process. A central executive module drives the whole system, and contributes to the generation of conscious thoughts by retrieving information from long-term memory. The surface form of thoughts thus emerges by …

A possible approach to the development of robotic multi-agent systems

The design of a an agent system for robotics is a problem that involves aspects coming from many different disciplines (robotics, artificial intelligence, computer vision, software engineering). The most difficult part of it, often consists in producing and tuning the algorithms that incorporates the robot behavior (planning, obstacle avoidance,. . . ) and abilities (vision, manipulation, navigation,. . . ). Frequently, the reuse of these parts is left to a copy and paste procedure from previous applications to the new one. In so doing many problems could arise. We propose a comprehensive approach for multi-agent systems oriented to robotics applications that uses a complete design methodol…

A cooperating strategy for objects recognition

The paper describes an object recognition system, based on the co-operation of several visual modules (early vision, object detector, and object recognizer). The system is active because the behavior of each module is tuned on the results given by other modules and by the internal models. This solution allows to detect inconsistencies and to generate a feedback process. The proposed strategy has shown good performance especially in case of complex scene analysis, and it has been included in the visual system of the DAISY robotics system. Experimental results on real data are also reported.

Representing social intelligence: An agent-based modeling application

Abstract Intelligent systems are composed of autonomous components that interact each others, with and through the environment, in order to give intelligent support for reaching specific objectives. In such kind of systems the environment is an active part of the system itself and provides input for runtime changing and adaptation. Modeling and representing systems like this is a hard task. In this paper we propose a biologically inspired approach that combined with the use of Agent-Based Modeling allows to create a means for analyzing emergent needs of the system at runtime and converting them into useful intelligent services to be provided. The experiment proposed for validating and illus…

An architecture with a mobile phone interface for the interaction of a human with a humanoid robot expressing emotions and personality

In this paper is illustrated the cognitive architecture of a humanoid robot based on the proposed paradigm of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). This paradigm is a step towards the simulation of an emotional behavior of a robot interacting with humans. The LSA approach allows the creation and the use of a data driven high-dimensional conceptual space. We developed an architecture based on three main areas: Sub-conceptual, Emotional and Behavioral. The first area analyzes perceptual data coming from the sensors. The second area builds the sub-symbolic representation of emotions in a conceptual space of emotional states. The last area triggers a latent semantic behavior which is related to the h…

Bounded Seed-AGI

Four principal features of autonomous control systems are left both unaddressed and unaddressable by present-day engineering methodologies: (1) The ability to operate effectively in environments that are only partially known at design time; (2) A level of generality that allows a system to re-assess and re-define the fulfillment of its mission in light of unexpected constraints or other unforeseen changes in the environment; (3) The ability to operate effectively in environments of significant complexity; and (4) The ability to degrade gracefully—how it can continue striving to achieve its main goals when resources become scarce, or in light of other expected or unexpected constraining fact…

A New Version of the Economic Metaphor of Politics for the Coalition Formation of a Robot Colony based on the Opponent Strategy

Conscious Machines: A Possibility? If So, How?

The scope of the paper is to encourage scientists and engineering to avoid to do what Einstein pointed out as being the hallmark of folly. Machine consciousness scholars must be brave enough to step out of the beaten path. There must be some big recurrent conceptual mistakes that prevent science and technology from addressing machine consciousness.

An Architecture for Telenoid Robot as Empathic Conversational Android Companion for Elderly People

In Human-Humanoid Interaction (HHI), empathy is the crucial key in order to overcome the current limitations of social robots. In facts, a principal defining characteristic of human social behaviour is empathy. The present paper presents a robotic architecture for an android robot as a basis for natural empathic human-android interaction. We start from the hypothesis that the robots, in order to become personal companions need to know how to empathic interact with human beings. To validate our research, we have used the proposed system with the minimalistic humanoid robot Telenoid. We have conducted human-robot interactions test with elderly people with no prior interaction experience with …

A Neuro-Genetic Approach to Real-Time Visual Grasp Synthesis

Grasping is an essential prerequisite for an agent, either human or robotic, to manipulate various kinds of objects present in the world. It is a fact that we would like robots to have the same skills as we do. However, despite the construction of human-hand-like robotic effectors, much work is still to be done in order to give robots the capability to grasp and manipulate objects. The goal of this work is to automatically perform grasp synthesis of unknown planar objects. In other words, we must compute points on the object's boundary to be reached by the robotic fingers such that the resulting grasp, among infinite possibilities, optimizes some given criteria. The space of possible config…

A cognitive approach to goal-level imitation

Imitation in robotics is seen as a powerful means to reduce the complexity of robot programming. It allows users to instruct robots by simply showing them how to execute a given task. Through imitation robots can learn from their environment and adapt to it just as human newborns do. Despite different facets of imitative behaviours observed in humans and higher primates, imitation in robotics has usually been implemented as a process of copying demonstrated actions onto the movement apparatus of the robot. While the results being reached are impressive, we believe that a shift towards a higher expression of imitation, namely the comprehension of human actions and inference of its intentions…

An Optimization Package for Electrical Distribution Network Reconfiguration

Anchoring by Imitation Learning in Conceptual Spaces

In order to have a robotic system able to effectively learn by imitation, and not merely reproduce the movements of a human teacher, the system should have the capabilities of deeply understanding the perceived actions to be imitated. This paper deals with the development of a cognitive architecture for learning by imitation in which a rich conceptual representation of the observed actions is built. The purpose of the following discussion is to show how the same conceptual representation can be used both in a bottom-up approach, in order to learn sequences of actions by imitation learning paradigm, and in a top-down approach, in order to anchor the symbolical representations to the perceptu…

A Cognitive Framework for Learning by Imitation

Metamodel-based metrics for agent-oriented methodologies

A great number of methodologies has been already intro duced in the agent-oriented software engineering field. Recently many of the authors of these methodologies also worked on their fragmentation thus obtaining portions (often called method or process fragments) that may be composed into new methodologies. The great advancement in this field, however does not correspond to equivalent results in the evaluation of the methodologies and their fragments. It is, for instance, difficult to select a fragment in the composition of a new methodology and to predict the methodology’s resulting features. This work introduces a suite of metrics for evaluating and comparing entire methodologies but als…

A Comparison between Habituation and Conscience mechanism in Self–Organizing Maps

In this letter, a preliminary study of habituation in self-organizing networks is reported. The habituation model implemented allows us to obtain a faster learning process and better clustering performances. The liabituable neuron is a generalization of the typical neuron and can be used in many self-organizing network models. The habituation mechanism is implemented in a SOM and the clustering performances of the network are compared to the conscience learning mechanism that follows roughly the same principle but is less sophisticated.

A Cognitive Model of Trust for Biological and Artificial Humanoid Robots

This paper presents a model of trust for biological and artificial humanoid robots and agents as antecedent condition of interaction. We discuss the cognitive engines of social perception that accounts for the units on which agents operate and the rules they follow when they bestow trust and assess trustworthiness. We propose that this structural information is the domain of the model. The model represents it in terms of modular cognitive structures connected by a parallel architecture. Finally we give a preliminary formalization of the model in the mathematical framework of the I/O automata for future computational and human-humanoid application.

ROBOTANIC: AN EXTERNALIST OUTLOOK OF A ROBOT ARCHITECTURE

ART Azzurra Robot Team

Azzurra Robot Team is the result of a joint effort of seven Italian research groups from Univ. of Brescia, Univ. of Genoa, Politecnico of Milano, Univ. of Padua, Univ. of Palermo, Univ. of Parma, Univ. of Roma "La Sapienza", and the Consorzio Padova Ricerche which has provided resources and a set up of the soccer field in its Center in Padua. Our goal at Robocup 1998 has been to provide a exible and low-cost experimental team to make experience before undertaking a larger project. Our long term goal is to foster the development of research and education projects on autonomous mobile robots by exploiting the RoboCup challenge.

L'Interazione tra uomo e robot attraverso la rete:tecnologie innovative, applicazioni e risorse

Agents and robots for collaborating and supporting physicians in healthcare scenarios

Graphical abstract

Emo-dramatic Robotic Stewards

In this paper will be presented an heterogeneous colony of robots capable to cooperate with people as effective partners to provide different kind of support among various working environments, such as museums, offices or trade fairs. Many systems have been integrated in order to develop robots capable to assists humans during the visit of the site, to guide them and to give information about the environment. According to the drama’s theory, each robot has a different character, something like a personality, so, each of them will interact with people in a different way. Robots show also emotional, non trivial, behaviours using an LSA conceptual space capable to synthesize the different emot…

A hybrid architecture for autonomous agents

A new hybrid approach for autonomous agents is described. The approach integrates in a principled way the functional and the behavioral approaches of agent design. The integration is based on the introduction of a conceptual space representation that links the subsymbolic level, which is a repository of reactive modules, with the symbolic level, in which rich symbolic descriptions of the agent environment take place. Results are reported obtained by an experimental implementation of the agent.

Representing and developing knowledge using Jason, CArtAgO and OWL

Contexts where agents and humans are required to collaborate and cooperate in a human-like fashion are complex systems where a high degree of self-adaptability of every component is demanding. A fundamental ingredient when developing and implementing this kind of systems is the knowledge representation. Knowledge of the goals, the environment, other agents' capabilities and task and of itself, is crucial in deciding which action to perform to reach an objective and to behave in a self-adaptive way. The problem of knowledge modeling and representation becomes more and more urgent if the agents' operation domain changes at runtime. Knowledge has to be updated and handled while the system is i…

Software Design of an AGI System Based on Perception Loop

According to the externalist approach, subjective experience hypothesizes a processual unity between the activity in the brain and the perceived event in the external world. A perception loop therefore occurs among the brain's activitie8 and the external world. In our work the metaphor of test is employed to create a software de8ign methodology for implementing an AGI system endowed with the perception loop. Preliminary experiments with a NAO humanoid robots are reported.

Physical integration: A causal account for consciousness

The issue of integration in neural networks is intimately connected with that of consciousness. In this paper, integration as an effective level of physical organization is contrasted with a methodological integrative approach. Understanding how consciousness arises out of neural processes requires a model of integration in just causal physical terms. Based on a set of feasible criteria (physical grounding, causal efficacy, no circularity and scaling), a causal account of physical integration for consciousness centered on joint causation is outlined.

Robots as intelligent assistants to face COVID-19 pandemic

AbstractMotivationThe epidemic at the beginning of this year, due to a new virus in the coronavirus family, is causing many deaths and is bringing the world economy to its knees. Moreover, situations of this kind are historically cyclical. The symptoms and treatment of infected patients are, for better or worse even for new viruses, always the same: more or less severe flu symptoms, isolation and full hygiene. By now man has learned how to manage epidemic situations, but deaths and negative effects continue to occur. What about technology? What effect has the actual technological progress we have achieved? In this review, we wonder about the role of robotics in the fight against COVID. It p…

Creativity in Conceptual Spaces

The main aim of this paper is contributing to what in the last few years has been known as computational creativity. This will be done by showing the relevance of a particular mathematical representation of G"ardenfors's conceptual spaces to the problem of modelling a phenomenon which plays a central role in producing novel and fruitful representations of perceptual patterns: analogy.

Invited Commentaries

Perceptual Social Dimensions of Human - Humanoid Robot Interaction

The present paper aims at a descriptive analysis of the main perceptual and social features of natural conditions of agent interaction, which can be specified by agent in human-humanoid robot interaction. A principled approach to human-robot interaction may be assumed to comply with the natural conditions of agents overt perceptual and social behaviour. To validate our research we used the minimalistic humanoid robot Telenoid. We have conducted human-robot interactions test with people with no prior interaction experience with robot. By administrating our questionnaire to subject after well defined experimental conditions, an analysis of significant variance correlation among dimensions in …

A Biologically Inspired Representation of the Intelligence of a University Campus

Abstract Intelligence or smartness in an urban environment implies several factors directed to improve quality of life and efficiency. It is important to note that in this context the inclusion of citizens and their devices is a key factor for reaching smartness. Data from mobile devices are increasingly used in everyday activities and have to be considered a useful means for handling and analyzing knowledge and communications. This paper shows how to represent important data when dealing with smartness by creating an analogy between the representation of human brain areas, activated when specific tasks are performed, and groups of students when behaviors or needs arise. The brain traffic c…

Is our robot self conscious?

A cognitive architecture for robot self-consciousness

Objective: One of the major topics towards robot consciousness is to give a robot the capabilities of self-consciousness. We propose that robot self-consciousness is based on higher order perception of the robot, in the sense that first-order robot perception is the immediate perception of the outer world, while higher order perception is the perception of the inner world of the robot. Methods and material: We refer to a robot cognitive architecture that has been developed during almost 10 years at the RoboticsLab of the University of Palermo. The architecture is organized in three computational areas. The subconceptual area is concerned with the low level processing of perceptual data comi…

Real-Time Visual Grasp Synthesis Using Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks

This paper addresses the problem of automatic grasp synthesis of unknown planar objects. In other words, we must compute points on the object’s boundary to be reached by the robotic fingers such that the resulting grasp, among infinite possibilities, optimizes some given criteria. Objects to be grasped are represented as superellipses, a family of deformable 2D parametric functions. They can model a large variety of shapes occurring often in practice by changing a small number of parameters. The space of possible grasp configurations is analyzed using genetic algorithms. Several quality criteria from existing literature together with kinematical and mechanical considerations are considered.…

Development of intelligent service robots

The creation of intelligent robots has been a major goal of Artificial Intelligence since the early days and has provided many motivations to Artificial Intelligence researchers. Therefore, a large body of research has been done in this field and many relevant results have shown that integration of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics techniques is a viable approach towards this goal. This article summarizes the efforts and the achievements of several Italian research groups in the development of intelligent robotic systems characterized by a suitable integration of Artificial Intelligence and Robotic techniques. The contributions collected in this article show the long history of this rese…

Conceptual Spaces for Cognitive Architectures: A lingua franca for different levels of representation

During the last decades, many cognitive architectures (CAs) have been realized adopting different assumptions about the organization and the representation of their knowledge level. Some of them (e.g. SOAR [Laird (2012)]) adopt a classical symbolic approach, some (e.g. LEABRA [O'Reilly and Munakata (2000)]) are based on a purely connectionist model, while others (e.g. CLARION [Sun (2006)] adopt a hybrid approach combining connectionist and symbolic representational levels. Additionally, some attempts (e.g. biSOAR) trying to extend the representational capacities of CAs by integrating diagrammatical representations and reasoning are also available [Kurup and Chandrasekaran (2007)]. In this p…

Panormo: An Emo-Dramatic Tour Guide

A cognitive robot architecture based on 3D simulator of robot and environment

The role of monitoring and emotions in a cognitive architecture for an outdoor robot guide

Imitation Learning and Anchoring through Conceptual Spaces

In order to have a robotic system able to effectively learn by imitation and not merely reproduce the movements of a human teacher, the system should have the capability to deeply understand the perceived actions to be imitated. This paper deals with the development of a cognitive architecture for learning by imitation in which a rich conceptual representation of the observed actions is built. The purpose of the following discussion is to show how the same conceptual representation can be used both in a bottom-up approach, in order to learn sequences of actions by imitation learning paradigm, and in a top-down approach, in order to anchor the symbolical representations to the perceptual act…

Self-conscious robotic system design process-from analysis to implementation

Developing robotic systems endowed with self-conscious capabilities means realizing complex sub-systems needing ad-hoc software engineering techniques for their modelling, analysis and implementation. In this chapter the whole process (from analysis to implementation) to model the development of self-conscious robotic systems is presented and the new created design process, PASSIC, supporting each part of it, is fully illustrated. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

AN ARCHITECTURE FOR HUMANOID ROBOT EXPRESSING EMOTIONS AND PERSONALITY

In this paper we illustrate the cognitive architecture of a humanoid robot based on the proposed paradigm of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). The LSA approach allows the creation and the use of a data driven high-dimensional conceptual space. This paradigm is a step towards the simulation of an emotional behavior of a robot interacting with humans. The Architecture is organized in three main areas: Sub-conceptual, Emotional and Behavioral. The first area processes perceptual data coming from the sensors. The second area is the “conceptual space of emotional states” which constitutes the sub-symbolic representation of emotions. The last area activates a latent semantic behavior related to the…

Designing MAS Organizations with the support of a UML CASE tool

Agents in dynamic contexts, a system for learning plans

Reproducing the human ability to cooperate and collaborate in a dynamic environment is a significant challenge in the field of human-robot teaming interaction. Generally, in this context, a robot has to adapt itself to handle unforeseen situations. The problem is runtime planning when some factors are not known before the execution starts. This work aims to show and discuss a method to handle this kind of situation. Our idea is to use the Belief-Desire-Intention agent paradigm, its the Jason reasoning cycle and a Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System. The result is a novel method that gives the robot the ability to select the best plan.

A Notation for Modeling Jason-Like BDI Agents

The design and development of a large Multi Agent System (MAS) is a complex and difficult activity where a proper modeling notation may offer a significant contribution to the formulation of the best solution. The support provided by a specific CASE tool can significantly contribute to make the chosen approach technically valid and it is also a fundamental element of a feasible development strategy. The present work reports a UML profile and the related graphical notation for describing a MAS based on the Jason meta model. Moreover a specific CASE tool has been developed for supporting MASs design and automatic code generation. The proposed notation is shown in details using a classical exa…

Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness

Learning high-level manipulative tasks through imitation

This paper presents ConSCIS, Conceptual Space based Cognitive Imitation System, which tightly links low-level data processing with knowledge representation in the context of robot imitation. Our focus is on the program-level imitation: we are interested in the final effects of actions on objects, and not on the particular kinematic or dynamic properties of the motion. The same architecture is used both to analyze and represent the task to be imitated, and to perform the imitation by generalizing in novel and different circumstances. The implemented experimental scenario is a two dimensional world populated with various objects in which observation/imitation takes place. To validate our appr…

A system based on neural architectures for the reconstruction of 3-D shapes from images

The connectionist approach to the recovery of 3-D shape information from 2-D images developed by the authors, is based on a system made up by two cascaded neural networks. The first network is an implementation of the BCS, an architecture which derives from a biological model of the low level visual processes developed by Grossberg and Mingolla: this architecture extracts a sort of brightness gradient map from the image. The second network is a backpropagation architecture that supplies an estimate of the geometric parameters of the objects in the scene under consideration, starting from the outputs of the BCS. A detailed description of the system and the experimental results obtained by si…

Decision Process in Human-Agent Interaction: Extending Jason Reasoning Cycle

The main characteristic of an agent is acting on behalf of humans. Then, agents are employed as modeling paradigms for complex systems and their implementation. Today we are witnessing a growing increase in systems complexity, mainly when the presence of human beings and their interactions with the system introduces a dynamic variable not easily manageable during design phases. Design and implementation of this type of systems highlight the problem of making the system able to decide in autonomy. In this work we propose an implementation, based on Jason, of a cognitive architecture whose modules allow structuring the decision-making process by the internal states of the agents, thus combini…

At Your Service: Coffee Beans Recommendation From a Robot Assistant

With advances in the field of machine learning, precisely algorithms for recommendation systems, robot assistants are envisioned to become more present in the hospitality industry. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the need to have more service robots in our everyday lives, to minimise the risk of human to-human transmission. One such example would be coffee shops, which have become intrinsic to our everyday lives. However, serving an excellent cup of coffee is not a trivial feat as a coffee blend typically comprises rich aromas, indulgent and unique flavours and a lingering aftertaste. Our work addresses this by proposing a computational model which recommends optima…

Automatic Landmark Detection and Recognition in Autonomous Robotics

Modeling Conscious and Unconscious Processes in Jazz Improvisation

Locus of control e robot: implementazione e validazione di un modello simulativo di apprendimento sociale

Hybrid architecture for shape reconstruction and object recognition

The proposed architecture is aimed to recover 3-D- shape information from gray-level images of a scene; to build a geometric representation of the scene in terms of geometric primitives; and to reason about the scene. The novelty of the architecture is in fact the integration of different approaches: symbolic reasoning techniques typical of knowledge representation in artificial intelligence, algorithmic capabilities typical of artificial vision schemes, and analogue techniques typical of artificial neural networks. Experimental results obtained by means of an implemented version of the proposed architecture acting on real scene images are reported to illustrate the system capabilities.

An Architecture for Humanoid Robot Expressing Emotions and Personality

In this presentation we illustrate the cognitive architecture of a humanoid robot based on the proposed paradigm of Latent Semantic Behavior (LSB). LSB is based on the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) approach that allow the creation and the use of a data driven high-dimensional conceptual space. This paradigm is a step towards the simulation of an emotional behavior of a robot interacting with humans. The Architecture is organized in three main areas: Sub-Conceptual, Emotional and Behavioral. The first area processes perceptual data coming from the sensors. The second area is the "conceptual space of emotional states" which constitutes the sub-symbolic representation of emotions. The last ar…

Motion analysis using the novelty filter

Abstract An original approach to the motion analysis, based on the novelty filter, is proposed. The novelty filter stresses the novelties occurring in a pattern representing an image of the scene under consideration with respect to patterns representing previous images of the same scene, so that visual information about the motion of the objects is obtained. The novelty filter may be implemented by a neural network architecture, taking advantage of the capabilities of massive parallelism, adaptive learning and noise robustness. The novelty filter may learn the entire trajectory of an object, through an incremental learning of a sequence of images capturing the scene, thus emphasizing if the…

An architecture for observational learning and decision making based on internal models

We present a cognitive architecture whose main constituents are allowed to grow through a situated experience in the world. Such an architectural growth is bootstrapped from a minimal initial knowledge and the architecture itself is built around the biologically-inspired notion of internal models. The key idea, supported by findings in cognitive neuroscience, is that the same internal models used in overt goal-directed action execution can be covertly re-enacted in simulation to provide a unifying explanation to a number of apparently unrelated individual and social phenomena, such as state estimation, action and intention understanding, imitation learning and mindreading. Thus, rather than…

On Computational Models of Interconnected Perception, Reasoning, and Action — in Dream Worlds

We distinguish between real versus unreal worlds, and include in the latter category fictional worlds and — perhaps the hardest type of unreal world to plumb — dream worlds. Dream worlds, from the standpoint of building computational cognitive models, present a number of acute challenges in at least three areas of human mentation that are for us as AI researchers and computational cognitive scientists deeply interconnected; these areas are: perception, reasoning, and action. We are attempting to specifically answer three tough questions, one in each of these three areas; the answers (for us) must be based upon robust computational models that are both theoretically well-founded, and brought…

A New Min-Max Optimisation Approach for Fast Learning Convergence of Feed-Forward Neural Networks

One of the most critical aspect for a wide use of neural networks to real world problems is related to the learning process which is known to be computational expensive and time consuming.

Acceptability Study of A3-K3 Robotic Architecture for a Neurorobotics Painting

In this paper, authors present a novel architecture for controlling an industrial robot via Brain Computer Interface. The robot used is a Series 2000 KR 210-2. The robotic arm was fitted with DI drawing devices that clamp, hold and manipulate various artistic media like brushes, pencils, pens. User selected a high-level task, for instance a shape or movement, using a human machine interface and the translation in robot movement was entirely demanded to the Robot Control Architecture defining a plan to accomplish user's task. The architecture was composed by a Human Machine Interface based on P300 Brain Computer Interface and a robotic architecture composed by a deliberative layer and a reac…

Quantum planning for swarm robotics

Computational resources of quantum computing can enhance robotic motion, decision making, and path planning. While the quantum paradigm is being applied to individual robots, its approach to swarms of simple and interacting robots remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we attempt to bridge the gap between swarm robotics and quantum computing, in the framework of a search and rescue mission. We focus on a decision-making and path-planning collective task. Thus, we present a quantum-based path-planning algorithm for a swarm of robots. Quantization enters position and reward information (measured as a robot’s proximity to the target) and path-planning decisions. Pairwise information-exchan…

Machine consciousness: A manifesto for robotics

Machine consciousness is not only a technological challenge, but a new way to approach scientific and theoretical issues which have not yet received a satisfactory solution from AI and robotics. We outline the foundations and the objectives of machine consciousness from the standpoint of building a conscious robot. © 2009 World Scientific Publishing Company.

A Robot Architecture Based on Higher Order Perception Loop

The paper discusses the self-consciousness of a robot as based on higher order perceptions of the robot itself. In this sense, the first order perceptions of the robot are the immediate perceptions of the outer world of the robot, while higher order perceptions are the robot perceptions of its own inner world. The resulting architecture based on higher order perceptions has been implemented and tested in a project regarding a robotic touristic guide acting in the Botanical Garden of the University of Palermo.

An Emphatic Humanoid Robot with Emotional Latent Semantic Behavior

In this paper we propose an Entertainment Humanoid Robot model based on Latent Semantic Analysis, that tries to exhibit an emotional behavior in the interaction with human. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), based on vector space allows the coding of the words semantics by specific statistical computations applied to a large corpus of text. We illustrate how the creation and the use of this emotional conceptual space can provide a framework upon which to build “Latent Semantic Behavior” because it simulates the emotionalassociative capabilities of human beings. This approach integrates traditional knowledge representation with intuitive capabilities provided by geometric and sub-symbolic infor…

Neural networks as soft sensors: a comparison in a real world application

Towards Externalist Robotics

New systems for extracting 3-D shape information from images

Neural architectures may offer an adequate way to deal with early vision since they are able to learn shape features or classify unknown shapes, generalising the features of a few meaningful examples, with a low computational cost after the training phase. Two different neural approaches are proposed by the authors: the first one consists of a cascaded architecture made up by a first stage named BWE (Boundary Webs Extractor) which is aimed to extract a brightness gradient map from the image, followed by a backpropagation network that estimates the geometric parameters of the object parts present in the perceived scene. The second approach is based on the extraction of the boundary webs map …

Comparative Reasoning for Intelligent Agents

We demonstrate new comparative reasoning abilities of NARS, a formal model of intelligence, which enable the asymmetric comparison of perceivable quantifiable attributes of objects using rela- tions. These new abilities are implemented by extending NAL with addi- tional inference rules. We demonstrate the new capabilities in a bottle- picking experiment on a mobile robot running ONA, an implementation of NARS.

The Conscious Robotic Arm-Hand Project

Reaching and grasping a glass of water by locked-in ALS patients through a BCI-controlled humanoid robot

The contribution of AI to enhance understanding of Cultural Heritage.

The Artificial Intelligence & Cultural Heritage (AI & CH) working group was born in 1999 with the aim at promoting various scientific activities to increase a more active collaboration between the sectors of cultural assets and artificial intelligence. The many events (workshops and schools) organized over the years have shown the validity of this group for exchanging ideas and gathering researchers and practitioners from different fields. New applications of informatics and artificial intelligence have provided the opportunity to produce innovative tools for documenting, managing and communicating cultural heritage. For this anniversary we intend to show how some of the most important meth…

A Neural Architecture for 3D Segmentation

An original neural scheme for segmentation of range data is presented, which is part of a more general 3D vision system for robotic applications. The entire process relies on a neural architecture aimed to perform first order image irradiance analysis, that is local estimation of magnitude and orientation of the image irradiance gradient.

Grounding concepts as emerging clusters in multiple conceptual spaces

A novel framework for symbol grounding in artificial agents is presented, which relies on the key idea that concepts "emerge" implicitly at the perceptual level as clusters of points with similar features forming homogeneous regions in multiple perceptual Conceptual Spaces (pCS). Such spaces describe percepts such as color, texture, shape, and position that in turn are the properties of the objects populating the agent's environment. Objects are represented in a suitable object Conceptual Space where all their features are composed together again using clustering in pCSs. Symbols will be learned from such a tensor space. A detailed description of both the framework and its theoretical found…

A Segmentation System for Soccer Robot Based on Neural Networks

An innovative technique for segmentation of color images is proposed. The technique implements an approach based on thresholding of the hue histogram and a feed-forward neural network that learns to recognize the hue ranges of meaningful objects. A new function for detecting valleys of the histogram has been devised and tested. A novel blurring algorithm for noise reduction that works effectively when used over hue image has been employed. The reported experimental results show that the technique is reliable and robust even in presence of changing environmental conditions. Extended experimentation has been carried on the framework of the Robot Soccer World Cup Initiative (RoboCup).

A cognitive architecture for music perception exploiting conceptual spaces

A cognitive architecture for a musical agent is presented. The architecture extends and complete an architecture for computer vision previously developed by the author by taking into account many relationships between vision and music perception. The focus of the agent architecture is an intermediate conceptual area between the subconceptual and linguistic areas. A conceptual space for the perception of tones and intervals is thus presented, based on the dissonance measure of the tones. Problems and future works of the proposed approach are finally discussed.

Economic Metaphor of Italian Politics: A New election Mechanism for Dynamic Coalition Formation in a Robot Team

Artificial Consciousness

“Artificial” or “machine” consciousness is the attempt to model and implement aspects of human cognition that are identified with the elusive and con- troversial phenomenon of consciousness. The chapter reviews the main trends and goals of artificial consciousness research, as environmental coupling, autonomy and resilience, phenomenal experience, semantics or intentionality of the first and sec- ond type, information integration, attention. The chapter also proposes a design for a general “consciousness oriented” architecture that addresses many of the discussed research goals. Comparisons with competing approaches are then presented.

Integrating Liquid Biopsy and Radiomics to Monitor Clonal Heterogeneity of EGFR-Positive Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

BackgroundEGFR-positive Non-small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) is a dynamic entity and tumor progression and resistance to tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) arise from the accumulation, over time and across different disease sites, of subclonal genetic mutations. For instance, the occurrence of EGFR T790M is associated with resistance to gefitinib, erlotinib, and afatinib, while EGFR C797S causes osimertinib to lose activity. Sensitive technologies as radiomics and liquid biopsy have great potential to monitor tumor heterogeneity since they are both minimally invasive, easy to perform, and can be repeated over patient’s follow-up, enabling the extraction of valuable information. Yet, to date, t…

Learning of Actions and Goals through Observation and Imitation

A Cognitive Framework for Imitation Learning

Abstract In order to have a robotic system able to effectively learn by imitation, and not merely reproduce the movements of a human teacher, the system should have the capabilities of deeply understanding the perceived actions to be imitated. This paper deals with the development of cognitive architecture for learning by imitation in which a rich conceptual representation of the observed actions is built. The purpose of the following discussion is to show how this Conceptual Area can be employed to efficiently organize perceptual data, to learn movement primitives from human demonstration and to generate complex actions by combining and sequencing simpler ones. The proposed architecture ha…

Designing a problem specific design process for multi-agent systems

A meta-cognitive architecture for planning in uncertain environments

Abstract The behavior of an artificial agent performing in a natural environment is influenced by many different pressures and needs coming from both external world and internal factors, which sometimes drive the agent to reach conflicting goals. At the same time, the interaction between an artificial agent and the environment is deeply affected by uncertainty due to the imprecision in the description of the world, and the unpredictability of the effects of the agent’s actions. Such an agent needs meta-cognition in terms of both self-awareness and control. Self-awareness is related to the internal conditions that may possibly influence the completion of the task, while control is oriented t…

The economic metaphor of italian politics for dynamic coalition formation of a colony of Aibo robots in the Robocup Environment

Knowledge acquisition through introspection in Human-Robot Cooperation

Abstract When cooperating with a team including humans, robots have to understand and update semantic information concerning the state of the environment. The run-time evaluation and acquisition of new concepts fall in the critical mass learning. It is a cognitive skill that enables the robot to show environmental awareness to complete its tasks successfully. A kind of self-consciousness emerges: the robot activates the introspective mental processes inferring if it owns a domain concept or not, and correctly blends the conceptual meaning of new entities. Many works attempt to simulate human brain functions leading to neural network implementation of consciousness; regrettably, some of thes…

An associative link from geometric to symbolic representations in artificial vision

Recent approaches to modelling the reference of internal symbolic representations of intelligent systems suggest to consider a computational level of a subsymbolic kind. In this paper the integration between symbolic and subsymbolic processing is approached in the framework of the research work currently carried on by the authors in the field of artificial vision. An associative mapping mechanism is defined in order to relate the constructs of the symbolic representation to a geometric model of the observed scene.

Robot's Inner Speech Effects on Trust and Anthropomorphic Cues in Human-Robot Cooperation

Inner Speech is an essential but also elusive human psychological process which refers to an everyday covert internal conversation with oneself. We argue that programming a robot with an overt self-talk system, which simulates human inner speech, might enhance human trust by improving robot transparency and anthropomorphism. For this reasons, this work aims to investigate if robot’s inner speech, here intended as overt self-talk, affects human trust and anthropomorphism when human and robot cooperate. A group of participants was engaged in collaboration with the robot. During cooperation, the robot talks to itself. To evaluate if the robot’s inner speech influences human trust, two question…

A Hybrid Neural Network Architecture for Dynamic Scene Understanding

A hyprdid (neural and symbolic) architecture allowing for a deep understanding of moving scenes is described. The architecture is based on a working and effective integration among three levels of representation of data coming out from external sensors.

Towards a Semantic Information Encoding and Retrieval in Relational Database

Simulation based planning and mobile devices in cultural heritage robotics

A general theoretical framework for designing cognitive architectures: Hybrid and meta-level architectures for BICA

In this paper, we will discuss hybrid architectures in which different processing modules coexist and cooperate in a principled way. A fundamental and essential role is played by modules performing meta-computation, i.e., computation about computation itself. Meta-level architectures, therefore, become an essential complement of hybrid architectures for biologically inspired cognitive architectures (BICA). Engineering and modeling BICAs is a hard task due to the lack of techniques for developing and implementing their features. We propose a new concept of intelligent agent as a useful abstraction for developing BICAs and having means for representing all the involved entities together with …

E-MIP: A new mechanism for dynamic coalition formation in a robot team

When mobile robots colonies move in dynamic, not predictable and time variable environments, the problem now is on how can they achieve distributed solving strategies for solving complicate and difficult tasks. The development of a new robotic architecture for the coordination of robot colonies in dangerous and dynamic environments is outlined. The name of this new architecture is Economic Metaphor of Italian Politics (E-MIP), because it takes inspiration from the political organizations of Italian democratic governments, where the leader isn't only one robot but a government of three robots constitutes it while a second group of robots, the Robot Citizens, are the executor of the mission. …

A cognitive architecture for artificial vision

Abstract A new cognitive architecture for artificial vision is proposed. The architecture, aimed at an autonomous intelligent system, is cognitive in the sense that several cognitive hypotheses have been postulated as guidelines for its design. The first one is the existence of a conceptual representation level between the subsymbolic level, that processes sensory data, and the linguistic level, that describes scenes by means of a high level language. The conceptual level plays the role of the interpretation domain for the symbols at the linguistic levels. A second cognitive hypothesis concerns the active role of a focus of attention mechanism in the link between the conceptual and the ling…

Experiences with CiceRobot, a Museum Guide Cognitive Robot

The paper describes CiceRobot, a robot based on a cognitive architecture for robot vision and action. The aim of the architecture is to integrate visual perception and actions with knowledge representation, in order to let the robot to generate a deep inner understanding of its environment. The principled integration of perception, action and of symbolic knowledge is based on the introduction of an intermediate representation based on Gardenfors conceptual spaces. The architecture has been tested on a RWI B21 autonomous robot on tasks related with guided tours in the Archaeological Museum of Agrigento. Experimental results are presented.

An ASSOM neural network to represent actions performed by an autonomous agent

An ASSOM neural network to describe the action performed by an autonomous reactive agent is proposed. The neural network receives in input the sequences of data acquired by the agent internal sensors and it classifies them by generating the corresponding symbolic assertions. Experimental results performed on a RWI B12 autonomous robot are reported.

Anchoring symbols to conceptual spaces: the case of dynamic scenarios.

In recent years, there have been several proposals for the realization of models inspired to biological solutions for pattern recognition. In this work we propose a new approach, based on a hierarchical modular structure, to realize a system capable to learn by examples and recognize objects in digital images. The adopted techniques are based on multiresolution image analysis and neural networks. Performance on two different data sets and experimental timings on a single instruction multiple data (SIMD) machine are also reported.

Quantum RoboSound: Auditory Feedback of a Quantum-Driven Robotic Swarm

Data sonification enhance and enrich information understanding with an additional sensory dimension. Sonification also opens the way to more creative applications, joining arts and sciences. In this study, we present sequences of chords obtained as auditory feedback from the trajectories of a robotic swarm. The swarm behavior is an emerging effect from simple local interactions and autonomous decisions of each robot. The swarm effect can be identified through sonification outcomes in terms of voice leading patterns. Thus, chord patterns represent behavior patterns. The convergence to the target is represented by the convergence to a specific pitch. The swarm decision process is based upon q…

Comprehensive Uncertainty Management in MDPs

Multistage decision-making in robots involved in real-world tasks is a process affected by uncertainty. The effects of the agent’s actions in a physical en- vironment cannot be always predicted deterministically and in a precise manner. Moreover, observing the environment can be a too onerous for a robot, hence not continuos. Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are a well-known solution inspired to the classic probabilistic approach for managing uncertainty. On the other hand, including fuzzy logics and possibility theory has widened uncertainty representa- tion. Probability, possibility, fuzzy logics, and epistemic belief allow treating dif- ferent and not always superimposable facets of unce…

Description of Dynamic Structured Scenes by a SOM/ARSOM Hierarchy

A neural architecture is presented, aimed to describe the dynamic evolution of complex structures inside a video sequence. The proposed system is arranged as a tree of self-organizing maps. Leaf nodes are implemented by ARSOM networks as a way to code dynamic inputs, while classical SOM's are used to implement the upper levels of the hierarchy. Depending on the application domain, inputs are made by suitable low level features extracted frame by frame of the sequence. Theoretical foundations of the architecture are reported along with a detailed outline of its structure, and encouraging experimental results.

Synthetic phenomenology and high-dimensional buffer hypothesis

Synthetic phenomenology typically focuses on the analysis of simplified perceptual signals with small or reduced dimensionality. Instead, synthetic phenomenology should be analyzed in terms of perceptual signals with huge dimensionality. Effective phenomenal processes actually exploit the entire richness of the dynamic perceptual signals coming from the retina. The hypothesis of a high-dimensional buffer at the basis of the perception loop that generates the robot synthetic phenomenology is analyzed in terms of a cognitive architecture for robot vision the authors have developed over the years. Despite the obvious computational problems when dealing with high-dimensional vectors, spaces wit…

Time varying signal classification using a liquid state machine

Developing Self-Awareness in Robots via Inner Speech

The experience of inner speech is a common one. Such a dialogue accompanies the introspection of mental life and fulfills essential roles in human behavior, such as self-restructuring, self-regulation, and re-focusing on attentional resources. Although the underpinning of inner speech is mostly investigated in psychological and philosophical fields, the research in robotics generally does not address such a form of self-aware behavior. Existing models of inner speech inspire computational tools to provide a robot with this form of self-awareness. Here, the widespread psychological models of inner speech are reviewed, and a cognitive architecture for a robot implementing such a capability is…

Conceptual representations of actions for autonomous robots

An autonomous robot involved in long and complex missions should be able to generate, update and process its own plans of action. In this perspective, it is not plausible that the meaning of the representations used by the robot is given from outside the system itself. Rather, the meaning of internal symbols must be firmly anchored to the world through the perceptual abilities and the overall activities of the robot. According to these premises, in this paper we present an approach to action representation that is based on a "conceptual" level of representation, acting as an intermediate level between symbols and data coming from sensors. Symbolic representations are interpreted by mapping …

Reports of the AAAI 2019 Spring Symposium Series

Applications of machine learning combined with AI algorithms have propelled unprecedented economic disruptions across diverse fields in industry, military, medicine, finance, and others. With the forecast for even larger impacts, the present economic impact of machine learning is estimated in the trillions of dollars. But as autonomous machines become ubiquitous, recent problems have surfaced. Early on, and again in 2018, Judea Pearl warned AI scientists they must "build machines that make sense of what goes on in their environment," a warning still unheeded that may impede future development. For example, self-driving vehicles often rely on sparse data; self-driving cars have already been …

Economic Metaphor of Italian Politics: a new economic approach for multi-robot dynamic coalition formation

Symbolic and conceptual representation of dynamic scenes: Interpreting situation calculus on conceptual spaces

In (Chella et al. [1,2]) we proposed a framework for the representation of visual knowledge, with particular attention to the analysis and the representation of scenes with moving objects and people. One of our aims is a principled integration of the models developed within the artificial vision community with the propositional knowledge representation systems developed within symbolic AI. In the present note we show how the approach we adopted fits well with the representational choices underlying one of the most popular symbolic formalisms used in cognitive robotics, namely the situation calculus.

Robot’s Inner Speech Effects on Human Trust and Anthropomorphism

AbstractInner Speech is an essential but also elusive human psychological process that refers to an everyday covert internal conversation with oneself. We argued that programming a robot with an overt self-talk system that simulates human inner speech could enhance both human trust and users’ perception of robot’s anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, intelligence and safety. For this reason, we planned a pre-test/post-test control group design. Participants were divided in two different groups, one experimental group and one control group. Participants in the experimental group interacted with the robot Pepper equipped with an over inner speech system whereas participants in the control …

Emotions in a cognitive architecture for human robot interactions

A robot architecture is proposed in which cognitive models of emotions are modelled in terms of conceptual spaces. The architecture has been implemented in a anthropomorphic robotic hand system. Experimental results are described related to an experimental setup in which the robot system plays Rock Paper Scissor against a human opponent Copyright © 2004, American Association for Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org).

The Sound of Swarm. Auditory Description of Swarm Robotic Movements

Movements of robots in a swarm can be mapped to sounds, highlighting the group behavior through the coordinated and simultaneous variations of musical parameters across time. The vice versa is also possible: sound parameters can be mapped to robotic motion parameters, giving instructions through sound. In this article, we first develop a theoretical framework to relate musical parameters such as pitch, timbre, loudness, and articulation (for each time) with robotic parameters such as position, identity, motor status, and sensor status. We propose a definition of musical spaces as Hilbert spaces, and musical paths between parameters as elements of bigroupoids, generalizing existing conceptio…

Are Disembodied Agents Really Autonomous?

Introducing the BICA Society

The Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures Society, or the BICA Society, is a recently formed nonprofit organization. The purpose of the Society is to promote and facilitate the transdisciplinary study of biologically inspired cognitive architectures (BICA), in particular, aiming at the emergence of a unifying, generally accepted framework for the design, characterization and implementation of human-level cognitive architectures. The First International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA 2010) is at the same time officially the First Annual Meeting of the BICA Society.

Visually-Grounded Language Model for Human-Robot Interaction

Visually grounded human-robot interaction is recognized to be an essential ingredient of socially intelligent robots, and the integration of vision and language increasingly attracts attention of researchers in diverse fields. However, most systems lack the capability to adapt and expand themselves beyond the preprogrammed set of communicative behaviors. Their linguistic capabilities are still far from being satisfactory which make them unsuitable for real-world applications. In this paper we will present a system in which a robotic agent can learn a grounded language model by actively interacting with a human user. The model is grounded in the sense that meaning of the words is linked to a…

Hankelet-based action classification for motor intention recognition

Powered lower-limb prostheses require a natural, and an easy-to-use, interface for communicating amputee’s motor intention in order to select the appropriate motor program in any given context, or simply to commute from active (powered) to passive mode of functioning. To be widely accepted, such an interface should not put additional cognitive load at the end-user, it should be reliable and minimally invasive. In this paper we present a one such interface based on a robust method for detecting and recognizing motor actions from a low-cost wearable sensor network mounted on a sound leg providing inertial (accelerometer, gyrometer and magnetometer) data in real-time. We assume that the sensor…

A neural architecture for 3D segmentation

An original neural scheme for segmentation of range data is presented, which is part of a more general 3D vision system for robotic applications. The entire process relies on a neural architecture aimed to perform first order image irradiance analysis, that is local estimation of magnitude and orientation of the image irradiance gradient.In the case of dense 3D data, irradiance is replaced by depth information so irradiance analysis of these pseudo-images provides knowledge about the actual curvature of the acquired surfaces. In particular, boundaries and contours due to mutual occlusions can be detected very well while there are no false contours due to rapid changing in brightness or colo…

Shape Description for Content-Based Image Retrieval

The present work is focused on a global image characterization based on a description of the 2D displacements of the different shapes present in the image, which can be employed for CBIR applications.To this aim, a recognition system has been developed, that detects automatically image ROIs containing single objects, and classifies them as belonging to a particular class of shapes.In our approach we make use of the eigenvalues of the covariance matrix computed from the pixel rows of a single ROI. These quantities are arranged in a vector form, and are classified using Support Vector Machines (SVMs). The selected feature allows us to recognize shapes in a robust fashion, despite rotations or…

CONVERSAZIONE SULL’USO DELL’INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE NELLA SCUOLA

Di seguito la conversazione con Chatgpt (https://chat.openai.com/chat), a oggi il più avanzato chatbot basato su intelligenza artificiale, intrattenuta in data 4 marzo 2023 sull’uso dell’i.a. nella scuola.

A Cognitive Approach to Robot Self-Consciousness

Conceptual Spaces and Robotics Emotions

THE CAUSAL ROOTS OF INTEGRATION AND THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

A fundamental feature of consciousness is unity. The problem is whether unity is compatible both with the physical underpinnings of conscious experience and with the fabric of the physical world in general.

Panel Summary: Symbolism and Connectionism Paradigms

The aim of this chapter is to report the panel discussion on symbolism and connectionism paradigms. In particular, the following hot point are analysed: what cognitive phenomena are most difficult for connectionists to explain? what cognitive phenomena are most naturally explained in connectionist terms? is symbolic deduction a central kind of human thinking? How do people make deductions? is nondeductive reasoning done in accord with the laws of probability? what areas of knowledge do you have that are easily described in terms of symbolic rules? concepts reduced to rules, concepts reduced to networks; symbolic and connectionist mechanisms of analogy; planning, decision, explanation, learn…

Agent-Oriented Software Patterns for Rapid and Affordable Robot Programming

Robotic systems are often quite complex to develop: they are huge, heavily constrained from the nonfunctional point of view and they implement challenging algorithms. The lack of integrated methods with reuse approaches leads robotic developers to reinvent the wheel each time a new project starts. This paper proposes to reuse the experience done when building robotic applications, by catching it into design patterns. These represent a general mean for (i) reusing proved solutions increasing the final quality, (ii) communicating the knowledge about a domain and (iii) reducing the development time and effort. Despite of this generality, the proposed repository of patterns is specific for mult…

Conceptual Spaces and Artificial Consciousness

Rilkean memories for a robot

The paper discusses the role of Rilkean memories, recently introduced by Rowlands, in the building of the autobiographic self of a robot.

What Will You Do Next? A Cognitive Model for Understanding Others’ Intentions Based on Shared Representations

Goal-directed action selection is the problem of what to do next in order to progress towards goal achievement. This problem is computationally more complex in case of joint action settings where two or more agents coordinate their actions in space and time to bring about a common goal: actions performed by one agent influence the action possibilities of the other agents, and ultimately the goal achievement. While humans apparently effortlessly engage in complex joint actions, a number of questions remain to be solved to achieve similar performances in artificial agents: How agents represent and understand actions being performed by others? How this understanding influences the choice of ag…

Knowledge representation for robotic vision based on conceptual spaces and attentive mechanisms

A new cognitive architecture for artificial vision is proposed. The architecture is aimed for an autonomous intelligent system, as several cognitive hypotheses have been postulated as guidelines for its design. The design is based on a conceptual representation level between the subsymbolic level processing the sensory data, and the linguistic level describing scenes by means of a high-level language. The architecture is also based on the active role of a focus of attention mechanism in the link between the conceptual and the linguistic level. The link between the conceptual level and the linguistic level is modelled as a time-delay attractor neural network.

Investigating Perceptual Features for a Natural Human - Humanoid Robot Interaction Inside a Spontaneous Setting

The present paper aims to validate our research on human-humanoid interaction (HHI) using the minimalistic humanoid robot Telenoid. We have conducted human-robot interactions test with 100 young people with no prior interaction experience with this robot. The main goal is the analysis of the two social dimension (perception and believability) useful for increasing the natural behavior between users and Telenoid. We administrated our custom questionnaire to these subjects after a well defined experimental setting (ordinary and goal-guided task). After the analysis of the questionnaires, we obtained the proof that perceptual and believability conditions are necessary social dimensions for a s…

HIGHER-ORDER ROBOT PERCEPTION LOOP

Audio-video people recognition system for an intelligent environment

In this paper an audio-video system for intelligent environments with the capability to recognize people is presented. Users are tracked inside the environment and their positions and activities can be logged. Users identities are assessed through a multimodal approach by detecting and recognizing voices and faces through the different cameras and microphones installed in the environment. This approach has been chosen in order to create a flexible and cheap but reliable system, implemented using consumer electronics. Voice features are extracted by a short time cepstrum analysis, and face features are extracted using the eigenfaces technique. The recognition task is solved using the same Su…

Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Consciousness and the Intermediate Level Fallacy

Recently, there has been considerable interest and effort to the possibility to design and implement conscious robots, i.e., the chance that a robot may have subjective experiences. However, typical approaches as the global workspace, information integration, enaction, cognitive mechanisms, embodiment, i.e., the Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Consciousness, henceforth, GOFAC, share the same conceptual framework. In this paper, we discuss GOFAC's basic tenets and their implication for AI and Robotics. In particular, we point out the intermediate level fallacy as the central issue affecting GOFAC. Finally, we outline a possible alternative conceptual framework towards robot consciousness.

How to engineer biologically inspired cognitive architectures

Biologically inspired cognitive architectures are complex systems where different modules of cognition interact in order to reach the global goals of the system in a changing environment. Engineering and modeling this kind of systems is a hard task due to the lack of techniques for developing and implementing features like learning, knowledge, experience, memory, adaptivity in an inter-modular fashion. We propose a new concept of intelligent agent as abstraction for developing biologically cognitive architectures. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.

A Semantic Information Retrieval in a Robot Museum Guide Application

Rilkean Memories and the Self of a Robot

This paper discusses the concept of Rilkean memories, recently introduced by Mark Rowlands, to analyze the complex intermix of hardware and software related to the self of a robot. The Rilkean memory of an event is related to the trace of that episode left in the body of the individual. It transforms the act of remembering into behavioral and bodily dispositions, thus generating the peculiar behavioral style of the individual, which is at the basis of her autobiographical self. In the case of long-life operating robots, a similar process occurs: the software of the robot has to cope with the changes that happened in the body of the robot because of damaging events in its operational life. T…

Knowledge Representation in CiceRobot: a Robot for Explorations of Cultural Heritage

A New Architecture Based on a Simulation Environment for Four Legged and Humanoid Robots

The perception loop in CiceRobot, a museum guide robot

The paper discusses a model of robot perception based on a comparison loop process between the actual and the expected robot input sensory data generated by a 3D robot/environment simulator. The perception loop process is operating in CiceRobot, a functional robot architecture implemented on an autonomous robot RWI B21 offering guided tours at the Archaeological Museum of Agrigento, Italy.

An intermediate level between the psychological and the neurobiological levels of descriptions of appraisal-emotion dynamics

Conceptual space is proposed as an intermediate representation level between the psychological and the neurobiological levels of descriptions of appraisal and emotions. The main advantage of the proposed intermediate representation is that the appraisal and emotions dynamics are described by using the terms of geometry.

Towards a Methodology for Designing Artificial Conscious Robotic Systems

Engineering artificial conscious robotic systems, able to perceive, think and act in an unstructured environment is a very challenging issue. Basing on the results of the experiences made in the latest years about modeling the perception loop of a robot and about the creation of ad-hoc methodologies for engineering complex systems, we developed an initial model of an artificial conscious system and extended a well known methodology (PASSI) for engineering the elements we identified as composing such a system. Copyright © 2009, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved.

AN EMOTIONAL ROBOTIC PARTNER FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES

In this paper an emotional humanoid robot based on Latent Semantic Analysis is presented. The robot is capable of interacting and entertain human users through the exhibition of spontaneous and non-repetitive emotional behaviours. The Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) paradigm, used to encode the semantics of words through a statistical analysis of a large corpus of text, is employed to build an emotional conceptual space that simulates the emotional associative capabilities of human beings, through “Latent Semantic Behaviours”. The LSA paradigm integrates traditional knowledge representation and intuitive capabilities provided by geometric and sub-symbolic information modelling. The effective…

A Cognitive Model of Trust for Biological and Artificial Humanoid Robots

Abstract This paper presents a model of trust for biological and artificial humanoid robots and agents as antecedent condition of interaction. We discuss the cognitive engines of social perception that accounts for the units on which agents operate and the rules they follow when they bestow trust and assess trustworthiness. We propose that this structural information is the domain of the model. The model represents it in terms of modular cognitive structures connected by a parallel architecture. Finally we give a preliminary formalization of the model in the mathematical framework of the I/O automata for future computational and human-humanoid application.

Coscienza artificiale: l’ingrediente mancante per un'IA etica?

Possiamo concepire macchine in grado di formulare intenzioni autonome e di prendere decisioni consapevoli? E se sì, come influenzerebbe questa capacità il loro comportamento etico? Alcuni casi di studio ci aiutano a capire come i progressi nella comprensione della coscienza artificiale possano contribuire alla creazione di sistemi IA più etici.

A Proposal of Process Fragment Definition and Documentation

This paper focuses on the field of Situational Method Engineering (SME) for the construction of agent-oriented design processes. Whatever SME approach a method designer wants to use, he has to manage two main elements: the (method or process) fragment and the repository where it is stored. Specific fragment definition and documentation are fundamental during these activities, for new process composition, and for the consequent system design activities. This paper aims at illustrating a proposal of fragment definition and documentation. This proposal is aimed to be an input for the IEEE FIPA Design Process Documentation and Fragmentation working group and, as regards our own research work, t…

An Innovative Mobile Phone Based System For Humanoid Robot Expressing Emotions And Personality

In this paper we illustrate a new version of the cognitive architecture of an emotional humanoid robot based on the proposed paradigm of Latent Semantic Behaviour (LSB). This paradigm is a step towards the simulation of an emotional behavior of a robot interacting with humans. The New Architecture uses a different procedure of induction of the emotional conceptual space and an Android mobile phone as user-friendly for the emotional interaction with robot. The robot generates its overall behavior also taking into account its "personality" encoded in the emotional conceptual space. To validate the system, we implemented the distribute system on a Aldebaran NAO humanoid robot and on a Android …

Conceptual spaces for anchoring

A Cognitive Robotics Implementation of Global Workspace Theory for Episodic Memory Interaction with Consciousness

Abstract—Artificial general intelligence revived in recent years after people achieved significant advances in machine learning and deep learning. This leads to the thinking of how real intelligence could be created. Consciousness theories believe that general intelligence is essentially conscious, yet no universal definition is agreed upon. In this work, Global Workspace Theory is implemented and integrated with crucial cognitive components. With the focus on episodic memory and inspiration from the nature of episodic memory in psychology and neuroscience, the episodic memory component is implemented within the Global Workspace framework. In our experiment, the robotic agent operates in a …

A Cognitive Architecture for Robotic Hand Posture Learning

This paper deals with the design and implementation of a visual control of a robotic system composed of a dexterous hand and video camera. The aim of the proposed system is to reproduce the movements of a human hand in order to learn complex manipulation tasks or to interact with the user. A novel algorithm for robust and fast fingertips localization and tracking is presented. A suitable kinematic hand model is adopted to achieve a fast and acceptable solution to an inverse kinematics problem. The system is part of a cognitive architecture for posture learning that integrates the perceptions by a high-level representation of the scene and of the observed actions. The anthropomorphic robotic…

Telenoid android robot as an embodied perceptual social regulation medium engaging natural human–humanoid interaction

The present paper aims to validate our research on human-humanoid interaction (HHI) using the minimalist humanoid robot Telenoid. We conducted the human-robot interaction test with 142 young people who had no prior interaction experience with this robot. The main goal is the analysis of the two social dimensions (''Perception'' and ''Believability'') useful for increasing the natural behaviour between users and Telenoid. We administered our custom questionnaire to human subjects in association with a well defined experimental setting (''ordinary and goal-guided task''). A thorough analysis of the questionnaires has been carried out and reliability and internal consistency in correlation bet…

A New Humanoid Architecture for Social Interaction between Human and a Robot Expressing Human-Like Emotions Using an Android Mobile Device as Interface

In this paper we illustrate a humanoid robot able to interact socially and naturally with a human by expressing human-like body emotions. The emotional architecture of this robot is based on an emotional conceptual space generated using the paradigm of Latent Semantic Analysis. The robot generates its overall affective behavior (Latent Semantic Behavior) taking into account the visual and phrasal stimuli of human user, the environment and its personality, all encoded in his emotional conceptual space. The robot determines its emotion according by all these parameters that influence and orient the generation of his behavior not predictable from the user. The goal of this approach is to obtai…

A Posture Sequence Learning System for an Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand

The paper presents a cognitive architecture for posture learning of an anthropomorphic robotic hand. Our approach is aimed to allow the robotic system to perform complex perceptual operations, to interact with an human user and to integrate the perceptions by a cognitive representation of the scene and the observed actions. The anthropomorphic robotic hand imitates the gestures acquired by the vision system in order to learn meaningful movements, to build its knowledge by different conceptual spaces and to perform complex interaction with the human operator.

Categories, Quantum Computing, and Swarm Robotics: A Case Study

The swarms of robots are examples of artificial collective intelligence, with simple individual autonomous behavior and emerging swarm effect to accomplish even complex tasks. Modeling approaches for robotic swarm development is one of the main challenges in this field of research. Here, we present a robot-instantiated theoretical framework and a quantitative worked-out example. Aiming to build up a general model, we first sketch a diagrammatic classification of swarms relating ideal swarms to existing implementations, inspired by category theory. Then, we propose a matrix representation to relate local and global behaviors in a swarm, with diagonal sub-matrices describing individual featur…

Simulation and anticipation as tools for coordinating with the future

A key goal in designing an artificial intelligence capable of performing complex tasks is a mechanism that allows it to efficiently choose appropriate and relevant actions in a variety of situations and contexts. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of building a general intelligence, where the contextual choice and application of actions must be done in the presence of large numbers of alternatives, both subtly and obviously distinct from each other. We present a framework for action selection based on the concurrent activity of multiple forward and inverse models. A key characteristic of the proposed system is the use of simulation to choose an action: the system continuously sim…

Artificial qualia: in search of computational correlates

An architecture for automatic gesture analysis

The field of human-computer interaction has been widely investigated in the last years, resulting in a variety of systems used in different application fields like virtual reality simulation environments, software user interfaces, and digital library systems.A very crucial part of all these systems is the input module which is devoted to recognize the human operator in terms of tracking and/or recognition of human face, arms position, hand gestures, and so on.In this work a software architecture is presented, for the automatic recognition of human arms poses. Our research has been carried on in the robotics framework. A mobile robot that has to find its path to the goal in a partially struc…

S.P.Q.R. + SICILIA

Towards Robot Conscious perception

Lessons learned with CiceRobot, a robot for museum guided tours

Agile PASSI: An agile process for designing agents

We have been developing robotic multi-agent systems for several years according to a well defined methodology (PASSI) obtaining good results, but day by day needs of a more versatile approach for designing software in a research context suggested us to find out a new methodology. A solution to our problems is represented by the Agile version of the PASSI methodology we present in this paper. We built this agile methodology by exploiting all the experiences done with conventional PASSI; it is supported by specific tools allowing patterns reuse and automatic production of some design documentation.

New shape from Shading methods

Shape from Shading is perhaps the most difficult topic to deal with in Artificial Vision: several researchers have faced it using different approaches. The most part of these methods are based on the Horn algorithm so they require very heavy regularity assumptions about the perceived objects' shape and are computationally expensive.

Fast Convergence of Neural Networks by Application of a New Min-Max Algorithm

Abstract The paper presents a new application of the min-max method, an original algorithm previously successfully applied in other areas and based on a combination of the quasi-Newton and steepest descent methods in order to find the weights minimising the error function of a feed forward neural networks. Preliminary results, obtained by applying the proposed method to a simple 2-2-1 architecture on small Boolean learning problems, are very promising.

A Networking Framework for Multi-Robot Coordination

Autonomous robots operating in real environments need to be able to interact with a dynamic world populated with objects, people, and, in general, other agents. The current generation of autonomous robots, such as the ASIMO robot by Honda or the QRIO by Sony, has showed impressive performances in mechanics and control of movements; moreover, recent literature reports encouraging results about the capability of such robots of representing themselves with respect to a dynamic external world, of planning future actions and of evaluating resulting situations in order to make new plans. However, when multiple robots are supposed to operate together, coordination and communication issues arise; w…

Video from Would a robot trust you? Developmental robotics model of trust and theory of mind

Short demonstrational video