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FP7-ICT-3 Challenge 2: Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics <2008-04-08
Challenge 2: Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics
The increasing complexity of our society and economy places greater emphasis on artificial systems such as robots, smart devices and machines which can deal autonomously with our needs and with the peculiarities of the environments we inhabit and construct.
This challenge is to extend systems engineering methods to deal with open-ended and frequently changing real-world environments.
A primary aim is to develop system capabilities to respond intelligently to gaps in the system's knowledge and to situations or contexts that have not been specified in its design. In order to meet this challenge, a mix of innovative scientific theory and technology is needed, based on natural and artificial cognition, in conjunction with new systems design and engineering principles and implementations for machines, robots and other devices which are robust and versatile enough to deal with the real world and to behave in a user-friendly and intuitive way with people in everyday situations.
Artificial cognitive systems, advanced interaction technologies and intelligent robots will help open up new opportunities for industry in Europe. Reinforcing leading edge research in these domains will help extend technologies into tomorrow’s industries and markets, in fields of potentially high socio-economic significance like industrial production, learning, healthcare, public safety, environmental monitoring, and in emerging sectors such as service robotics.
Autonomous surveillance systems can, for example, save crucial time in emergencies or hazardous situations. Artificial cognitive systems and intelligent robots can extend the capabilities of people to perform routine, dangerous or tiring tasks, especially in previously inaccessible, uncharted, or remote spaces on land, sea or air.
Scientific research will also improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying artificial and natural cognition, in particular learning and the development of competences requiring goal-setting, reasoning, decision-making, language, communication and cooperation. It will enable us to build machines that can understand, learn and generate concepts and translate them across languages with degrees of robustness and versatility not possible today. And it will spur breakthroughs in advanced behaviours of robots, such as in manipulating objects and interacting socially, which are key to their further penetration into real world environments.
The proposed activity supports industrial competitiveness by addressing technological challenges and socio-economic scenarios as identified inter-alia in the Strategic Research Agenda of EUROP, the European Technology Platform on robotics.
Objective ICT-2007.2.1 (ICT-2007.2.2): Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics
Target outcome:
a) Artificial systems that fulfil one or both of the following requirements:
• they can achieve general goals in a largely unsupervised way, and persevere under adverse or uncertain conditions; adapt, within reasonable constraints, to changing service and performance requirements, without the need for external re-programming, re-configuring, or re-adjusting.
• they communicate and co-operate with people or each other, based on a well grounded understanding of the objects, events and processes in their environment, and their own situation, competences and knowledge.
Work will result in demonstrators that operate largely autonomously in demanding and open-ended environments which call for a suitable mix of capabilities for sensing, data analysis, processing, control and acting; and for communication and co-operation with people or machines or both. Where required, systems will integrate high-level cognitive competencies; for example, for reasoning, planning and decision-making, and for active environmental modelling.
Proposals satisfying the above requirements should focus on one of the following areas:
Robots handling, individually or jointly, tangible objects of different shapes and sizes, and operating either fully autonomously (as for instance in difficult terrains with a need for robust locomotion, navigation and obstacle avoidance) or in co-operation with people in complex, dynamic spatial environments (e.g. domestic environments).
Robots, sensor networks and other artificial systems, monitoring and controlling material and informational processes e.g. in industrial manufacturing or public services domains. This may include information gathering and interpretation in real-time emergency or hazardous situations (e.g. through multi-sensory data-fusion) or in virtual spaces related to real world objects and people.
Intuitive multimodal interfaces and interpersonal communication systems providing personalised interactivity in real-world and virtual environments, based on improved human interaction modelling and understanding of contextually-referred communication, for example, by signs and signals in all modes (such as sound, vision, touch) and modalities (such as natural language, both spoken and written), through autonomous adaptation and by addressing user needs, intentions and emotions.
Work proposed in any of these areas should, as appropriate:
• develop and apply engineering approaches that cater for real-time requirements (if present) and systems modularity, and ensure the reliability, flexibility, robustness, scalability and, where relevant, also the safety of the resulting systems; and develop criteria for benchmarking these properties;
• contribute to the theory and application of learning in artificial systems, tackling issues related to the purposive and largely autonomous interpretation of sensor generated data arising in different environments, and to novel design and implementation principles of pertinent systems architectures.
• explore and validate the use of:
> advanced sensor, actuator, memory and control elements, components and platforms, based on new, possibly bio-mimetic, materials and hardware designs – e.g. for the realisation of systems with greater structural and functional diversity and modularity,
> new, possibly bio-inspired, information-processing paradigms, and of models of natural cognition (including human mental and linguistic development), adaptation, self-organisation, and emergence; and take account of the role of systems embodiment and affordances.
> new ways of combining statistical, knowledge driven and cognitive approaches to language understanding, generation, and translation by machines.
b) A principled approach to structuring research in relevant areas, addressing in particular learning in artificial systems, the requirements for cognitive capacities of robotic, interactive and language support systems, and including the development of experimental scenarios, the development or construction of resources for experimentation, and the development of performance metrics and definitions of autonomy levels for artificial systems.
c) Co-ordination with related national or regional research programmes or initiatives.
Expected impact:
• Leading-edge technology companies creating new products and services, and enhancing existing ones.
• New markets such as: extending the industrial robotics market to flexible small scale manufacturing, opening up services (professional and domestic) markets to robots, novel functionalities for embedded systems and assistive systems for interpersonal communications, such as support of dynamic translation, and effective medical diagnostics and therapeutics.
• Robust and versatile behaviour of artificial systems in open-ended environments providing intelligent response in unforeseen situations, and enhancing human-machine interaction
• Extended capabilities of people to perform routine, dangerous or tiring tasks in previously inaccessible, uncharted or remote spaces; saving critical time in emergencies or hazardous situations.
• Leading-edge research in Europe through collaborative and multidisciplinary experimentation with approaches to achieving machine intelligence and artificial cognitive systems, and through investigation of what artificial and natural cognitive systems can and cannot do.
Funding schemes
a): CP; b): NoE; c) CSA (CA only)
Indicative budget distribution12
ICT Call 3 - 97 M€:
- CP 87 M€ of which a minimum of 46 M€ to IP and a minimum of 15 M€ to STREP;
- NoE 8 M€;
- CSA 2 M€
Research Rationale
By promoting research into systems that have cognitive functions normally associated with people or animals and which exhibit a high degree of robustness in coping with unpredictable situations, we seek to overcome limitations of today's computers, robots, and other man-made creations to handle simple everyday situations with common sense and to work without pre-programming in natural surroundings, while maintaining and possibly improving the quality of their services.
Unit Mission
We support research on the construction of artificial cognitive systems than can interpret information (images, text, speech, video footage) and other forms of sensor data, and act purposefully and autonomously towards achieving goals.
These systems should learn and develop through individual or social interaction with their environment. The work should provide an enabling technology that applies across domains such as natural language understanding, image recognition, automated reasoning and decision support, robotics and automation, sensing and process control, and complex real-world systems. The work should furthermore borrow insights from the bio-sciences, and yield innovative insights about perception, understanding, interaction, learning and knowledge representation.
Artificial Cognitive Systems are at the junction of the cognitive, ICT, and natural sciences.
NEWS:
- Call 3 Information Day on Cognitive Systems, Interaction & Robotics will be organised in the UK on 26 November 2007. See the FP7UK site.
- Call 3 Information Day on Cognitive Systems, Interaction and Robotics will be organised in Luxembourg on 10 January 2008. See the event page.
Cognitive Systems, Interaction and Robotics in FP7
Several strands of R&D pursued separately under various Strategic Objectives of the 6th Framework Programme (including Cognitive Systems, Multimodal Interfaces and Advanced Robotics) have been brought together under Challenge 2 of the first ICT Work Programme of FP7 covering 2007?2008.
Unlike other Challenges under FP7-ICT, it comprises a single Objective: ?Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics?. This follows inter alia from the understanding that
- systems pertaining to any of these areas must be capable of responding intelligently and largely autonomously to gaps in their knowledge and to situations or contexts that have not been specified in their design (that is, they must be robust and flexible);
- artificial systems ought to be more effective in improving their performance and more natural in dealing with people ? where dealing with people is a requirement; and
- progress, in any of these areas, towards systems with the above characteristics can only be achieved by developing and adopting new engineering principles and approaches, based on largely common but as yet not fully explored scientific grounds.
Indeed, systems pertaining to any of these areas have to understand their respective dynamic environments, whether these call for navigation, grasping and manipulation, interaction with people, or simply the recognition and description of real or virtual objects and scenes.
Targets
In a nutshell, the three targets of Challenge 2 are:
- To develop (further) and validate the scientific foundations, engineering principles and approaches required to build systems with the above described capabilities;
- to build a strong basis for research on ways of reaching the long term goals inherent in this challenge and to provide the means for carrying out that research;
- to foster, monitor and coordinate at EU-level efforts of the many and varied relevant research communities in support of this challenge.
Calls for proposals and further information
ICT Call 3 is planned to be published in December 2007.
ICT Call 1 was published on 22 December 2006 and it closed on 8 May 2007.
In this context, you are referred to the following important documents:
- the ICT Work Programme 2007?2008 (, 481KB)
- Cognitive Systems, Interaction, Robotics: Technical Background Notes, January 2007 (, 99KB)
In addition, to mark the launch of FP7, Information Days were organised in Luxembourg on 24 & 25 January 2007. Presentations given at this event are available on the Presentations page.
2007
November
- 9 November 2007
- Mathematical Models of Cognitive Behaviour
- Bristol, UK
- This workshop, organised by the Pascal network of excellence and the euCognition coordination action, is interested in the application of probabilistic approaches to the general problem of modelling cognitive systems. The focus will be on modelling cognitive abilities as forms of probabilistic inference and especially on statistical and reactive models of cognitive behaviour.
- 26 November 2007
- ICT Call 3 Information Day in the UK - Cognition, Interaction & Robotics
- Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
- The UK National contact Point for the ICT theme of the European Commission's seventh research framework programme is pleased to announce an information day. This will take place at Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH. It will include speakers from the EC's Cognition & Robotics Unit and experts from the UK research field.
- FP7UK Events Team
- Tel: 0870 600 6080
- E-mail: Contact Form
- 26-27 November 2007
- COGIS'07 – COGnitive systems with Interactive Sensors
- Stanford University, USA
- Sensors are more and more integrated in complex systems and information systems, requiring more coherent, efficient, and reactive processes to be developed across the signal and image processing disciplines. Hence, system design and control pose major challenges in development of autonomous sensor systems and interactions between them, including mechanisms for their individual and collective behavior optimization. The symposium seeks to build a future-looking view of this emerging topic, considering methodological aspects as well as application potentials.
December
- 10-12 December 2007
- Symposium on Language and Robots
- Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
- Organised by the Distributed Language Group, the Symposium on Language and Robots aims to explore synergies and identify areas of collaboration between robotics and language sciences. As its starting point it takes a perspective which sees language as a dynamic and distributed cognitive process.
2008
January
- 6-11 January 2008
- Bayesian Cognition Winter School
- Chamonix - Mont-Blanc, France
- The Bayesian Cognition Winter School presents and discusses the latest advances in the use of probabilistic models and algorithms in life sciences and information sciences as ways of understanding the behaviour of subjects and the neural processing underlying this behaviour, and building robots and artificial agents that can function effectively in such circumstances.
- 10 January 2008
- Cognitive Systems, Interaction and Robotics - Call 3 Information Day
- Luxembourg
- This information event is addressed to researchers interested in submitting project proposals under Challenge 2 - Cognitive Systems, Interaction and Robotics.
- 10-11 January 2008
- 4th euCognition Six-Monthly Meeting
- Venice, Italy
- The fourth six-monthly meeting for members of the EU-funded European Network for the Advancement of Artificial Cognitive Systems. On Thursday, 10 January, the meeting will organise a student competition on cognitive systems research topics. Friday, 11 January, will be devoted to social cognition, featuring Steve Harnad, Luc Steels, Jordan Pollack and Michael Arbib as speakers.
- 22 January 2008
- The First International Workshop on Online Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning Techniques for Computer-Vision Applications (OPRMLT 2008)
- Funchal, Madeira, Portugal
- In real life, visual learning is supposed to be a continuous process; in machine vision, by contrast, learning has been so far considered in a limited and isolated way. Organised in conjunction with the 3rd International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications (VISAPP 2008 ), this workshop focuses on a recent trend in pattern recognition represented by online learning approaches which continuously update the data representation when new information arrives.
February
- 20-21 February 2008
- Models of Thought: Post-Cognitivist Methodologies
- Munich, Germany
- With the decline of 'symbols and rules' models of cognition (the essence of 'cognitivism'), the rise of thinking in areas such as 'situated cognition', 'embodied cognition' and 'distributed cognition' can be seen as falling under a general rubric of 'post-cognitivism'. This euCognition workshop discusses the impact of these new concepts on methodology. The twin themes are post-cognitivism and artifical systems/models.
March
- 12-15 March 2008
- Human-Robot Interaction 2008
- Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Human-robot interaction is essential in enabling robots to transcend the role of mere tools and begin to collaborate with humans to accomplish complex tasks. Directed at researchers in robotics, human-factors, ergonomics and human-computer interaction, this interdisciplinary conference showcases the best research in human-robot interaction. The 2008 theme 'Living With Robots' highlights the importance of the technical and social issues underlying long-term human-robot interaction towards companion and assistive robots for long-term use in everyday life and work activities.
April
- 2-4 April 2008
- CogSys 2008, International Conference on Cognitive Systems
- University of Karlsruhe, Germany
- After Bled in 2004 and Nijmegen in 2006, this is the third in a series of Cognitive Systems events which share and discuss the progress made in the research community around the EU sponsored projects in the field of Cognitive Systems. CogSys 2008 will take the form of a first international conference on Cognitive Systems, bringing together researchers from various fields to identify current research trends, to present and to review recent work and to speculate about the future of cognitive systems.
May
- 12-15 May 2008
- 6th International Conference on Computer Vision Systems – ICVS 2008
- Santorini, Greece
- This conference aims to bring together researchers and developers from both academia and industry worldwide to share their research results covering all aspects of intelligent vision systems. A major theme will be vision systems that interact with or respond to their environment in a dynamic and adaptive manner, with an emphasis put on integrated systems that are robust enough to be deployed in largely unconstrained environments.
WEKOMS 
