Talk: Self-organizing robots

SIIT Image and Vision Computing Laboratory Seminar

• What: Lecture on "Self-organization of behavior for autonomous robots"
• Who: Prof. Dr. Ralf Der, Institute of Computer Science, University of Leipzig, Germany
• When: 10:30 AM Monday March 13
• Where: 3207 BKD (Sirindhralai auditorium) [map]

Abstract:

Self-organization and the phenomenon of emergence which play an essential role in living systems form a major challenge to artificial life systems. This is not only because systems become more life like but also since self-organization may help in reducing the design efforts in creating complex behavior systems. The talk exemplifies our general approach to the self-organization of behavior which has been developed and tested in various examples in recent years. The robots dispose of a neural network controller and a world model which is also realized by a neural network. Our general paradigm of minimizing the so called time loop error is used in order to learn both the model and the controller concomitantly from scratch. We apply this approach to different robots with complicated physical properties which are completely unknown to the system. Nevertheless after some time the robots develop behaviors which are both body and environment related in a completely self-organized way. The applications are demonstrated by several videos of wheeled robots, a "rocking stamper", a spherical robot and various snake like artifacts. More information on our video page http://robot.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/research/videos/.