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…

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 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…

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…

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…

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

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 …

A Topic Recognition System for Real World Human-Robot Conversations

One of the main features of social robots is the ability to communicate and interact with people as partners in a natural way. However, achieving a good verbal interaction is a hard task due to the errors on speech recognition systems, and due to the understanting the natural language itself. This paper tries to overcome such kind of problems by presenting a system that enables social robots to get involved in conversation by recognizing its topic. Through the use of classical text mining approach, the presented system allows social robots to understand topics of conversation between human partners, enabling the customization of behaviours in their accordance. The system has been evaluated …

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…

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…

A MOBILE ROBOT FOR TRANSPORT APPLICATIONS IN HOSPITAL DOMAIN WITH SAFE HUMAN DETECTION ALGORITHM

We have been developing a MKR (Muratec Keio Robot), an autonomous omni-directional mobile transfer robot system for hospital applications. This robot has a wagon truck to transfer luggage, important specimens and other materials. This study proposes a safe obstacle collision avoidance technique that includes a human detection algorithm for omni directional mobile robots that realizes a safe movement technology. The robot can distinguish people from others obstacles with human detection algorithm. The robot evades to people more safely by considering its relative position and velocity with respect to them. Some experiments in a hospital were carried out to verify the performance of the human…

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…

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

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…

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

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.

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…

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

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 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.

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

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…

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 …

An emotional humanoid partner

In this paper we propose an emotional humanoid robot based on Latent Semantic Analysis, that exhibits an emotional behaviour in the interaction with human. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) paradigm is capable to encode the semantics of words using a statistical computation of a large corpus of text. We illustrate how the creation and the use of this emotional conceptual space allows the building of “Latent Semantic Behaviour” because it simulates the emotional associative capabilities of human beings. The presented approach integrates traditional knowledge representation and intuitive capabilities provided by geometric and sub-symbolic information modelling. To validate the effectiveness of t…

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…

PARLARE E INTERAGIRE CON UN ROBOT UMANOIDE. TRA MENTE NATURALE E MENTE DIGITALE

L’interazione sociale tra uomini e robot umanoidi è uno dei temi sui quali si focalizza attualmente la ricerca tenendo presente che l’interazione risulta efficace quando prevede anche la decodifica dei segnali non verbali e gestuali normalmente a corredo dei segnali verbali di comunicazione. Di seguito verranno illustrate quali capacità deve esibire un robot umanoide per percepire, dialogare e interagire socialmente con esseri umani, utilizzando sia segnali non verbali sia i bio-segnali cerebrali dell’uomo rilevati attraverso un caschetto BCI. I paradigmi di cooperazione umano-centrici per definire i ruoli sociali che un robot umanoide potrà avere domani nella società degli esseri umani son…

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…

Towards Partners Profiling in Human Robot Interaction Contexts

Individuality is one of the most important qualities of humans. Social robots should be able to model the individuality of the human partners and to modify their behaviours accordingly.This paper proposes a profiling system for social robots to be able to learn the individuality of human partners in social contexts. Profiles are expressed in terms of of identities and preferences bound together. In particular, people’s identity is captured by the use of facial features, while preferences are extracted from the discussion between the partners. Both are bound using an Hebb network. Experiments show the feasibility and the performances of the approach presented.

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…

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…

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…

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

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

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

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. …

An emotional storyteller robot

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

A Multimodal People Recognition System for an Intelligent Environment

In this paper, a multimodal system for recognizing people in intelligent environments is presented. Users are identified and tracked by detecting and recognizing voices and faces through cameras and microphones spread around the environment. This multimodal approach has been chosen to develop a flexible and cheap though reliable system, implemented through consumer electronics. Voice features are extracted through a short time spectrum analysis, while face features are extracted using the eigenfaces technique. The recognition task is achieved through the use of some Support Vector Machines, one per modality, that learn and classify the features of each person, while bindings between modalit…

Integrating Built-in Sensors of an Android with Sensors Embedded in the Environment for Studying a More Natural Human-Robot Interaction

Several studies supported that there is a strict and complex relationship between outer appearance and the behavior showed by the robot and that a human-like appearance is not enough for give a positive impression. The robot should behave closely to humans, and should have a sense of perception that enables it to communicate with humans. Our past experience with the android “Geminoid HI-1” demonstrated that the sensors equipping the robot are not enough to perform a human-like communication, mainly because of a limited sensing range. To overcome this problem, we endowed the environment around the robot with perceptive capabilities by embedding sensors such as cameras into it. This paper rep…

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…

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

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.

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 …

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…

S.P.Q.R. + SICILIA

Editorial

This Special Issue of Cognitive System Research on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures: Papers from the Tenth Annual International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA 2019) have solicited and collected research papers in all domains of science and technology that directly or indirectly may help us to make an advance toward the BICA Challenge, which is to implement the top essential functionality of the human mind in a machine. Overall, the volume presents a pleasant overview with contributions from many countries depicting all major topics in BICA Challenge research. Personally, I am very pleased to have served as guest editor, and I am convinced that…