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SUMMARY:Robot Genome Project
DTSTART:20150922T150000
DTSTAMP:20260429T182433Z
UID:e9bc151e6445d8e0049752fb4384a92861d78ac7d7b1dbfe1245e0d2
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Fumiya Iida\, University of Cambridge (UK)\nAn approach 
 of artificial evolution to morphologically improve our physical robots\nTh
 e concepts and sprits of embodied artificial intelligence have been around
  for the last decades and demonstrated the far reaching implications for o
 ur understanding of the nature of autonomy and adaptability through the co
 untless case studies. It is however not fully clarified methodologies with
  which the different aspects of embodiment can be coherently and consisten
 tly integrated into one entity of autonomous agent. In the last few years\
 , we have been developing an approach in which embodied agents could be st
 udied in the level of genetic encoding\, rather than that of behaviors. Th
 e framework consists of a mother robot (a robotic manipulator) that is cap
 able of handling various materials and robotic modules assembled into a va
 riety of child robots and evaluating the behavioral performances of child 
 robots in order to progressively improve designs over generations. Unlike 
 the conventional evolutionary robotics research\, our approach does not us
 e mathematical modeling in the evolutionary process\, we are able to explo
 re how embodied system-environment interactions influence the dynamics of 
 physical robot evolution by observing the mother robot “inventing” sur
 prising solutions to the given task. By introducing our recent experiments
  of building over 700 individual physical robots\, we will discuss the imp
 lications and challenges of our project.\nBio: Fumiya Iida received his ba
 chelor and master degrees in mechanical engineering at Tokyo University of
  Science (Japan\, 1999)\, and Dr. sc. nat. in Informatics at University of
  Zurich (2006). In 2004 and 2005\, he was also engaged in biomechanics res
 earch of human locomotion at Locomotion Laboratory\, University of Jena (G
 ermany). From 2006 to 2009\, he worked as a postdoctoral associate at the 
 Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory\, Massachusetts In
 stitute of Technology in USA. In 2006\, he awarded the Fellowship for Pros
 pective Researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation\, and in 20
 09\, he was appointed as a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor for
  bio-inspired robotics at ETH Zurich. His research interests include biolo
 gically inspired robotics\, embodied artificial intelligence\, and biomech
 anics\, and he has been involved in a number of research projects related 
 to dynamic legged locomotion\, navigation of autonomous robots\, and human
 -machine interactions. He has so far published over forty publications in 
 major robotics journals and conferences\, and edited two books. Currently 
 he serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Intelligent & Robotic S
 ystems and Frontiers in Neuroscience (Neurorobotics)\, and as a program co
 mmittee member for international conferences and workshops. In addition\, 
 he has organized a few seminal meetings such as the International Conferen
 ce of Morphological Computation and International Seminar of Embodied Arti
 ficial Intelligence.
LOCATION:BC 410 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BC%20410
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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