Project n:

511 931

Project acronym:

Mind RACES

Project title:

Mind RACES : from Reactive to Anticipatory Cognitive Embodied Systems

Instrument: STREP

Thematic Priority: Information Society Technology

PROJECT PERIODIC ACTIVITY REPORT No 1

Period covered from/to: 01/10/2004	- 30/09/2005	Date of preparation: 15/11/2005

Start date of the project: 01/10/2004	Duration: 36 months

Project coordinator name: Rino Falcone	Revision: approved

Project coordinator organisation name: ISTC-CNR

Document identifier:	MR_PERIODIC_ACTIVITY_REPORT_N_1
Date:	15/11/2005
Work package:	all
Partner(s):	ISDSIA, IST, ISTC-CNR, LUCS, NBU, NOZE, OFAI, UW-COGSCI
Lead Partner:	ISTC_CNR
Document status:	Verified and Approved
Deliverable identifier:	D1.1_MR_PAR_1

Delivery Slip
Name	Partner	Date	Signature
From	All	ISTC-CNR	10/11/2005

Verified	Rino Falcone	ISTC-CNR	11/11/2005

Approved by	Rino Falcone	ISTC-CNR	12/11/2005

Files
Software Products	User files
MS Word™	MR_PERIODIC_ACTIVITY_REPORT_N_1

Project information
Project acronym:	Mind RACES
Project full title:

Mind RACES: from Reactive to Anticipatory

Cognitive Embodied Systems

Proposal/Contract no.:	IST-511931
Project manager:	ISTC-CNR
Name:	Rino Falcone
Address:	CNR-ISTC Via San Martino della Battaglia, 44 - 00185 Rome, ITALY
Phone:	+39 06 44595253
Fax:	+39 06 44595243
E-mail	rino.falcone@istc.cnr.it

CONTENT

Delivery Slip	2

Files	2

Project information	3

PUBLISHABLE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY	5

1 PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS DURING THE REPORTING PERIOD	8

2	WORKPACKAGES PROGRESS OF THE PERIOD	9

2.1	Wp2. Scenarios specification and evaluation	9

2.2	Wp3. Attention, monitoring and control	9

2.3	Wp4. Goal-directed behaviour, pro-activity and analogy	9

2.4	Wp5. Anticipatory emotions	9

2.5	Wp6: Integration	10

2.6	Wp7. Dissemination and technological perspectives	10

STATUS OF DELIVERABLES AND MILESTONES	10

Deliverables Status	10

Work-plan – Milestones List	11

Work-packages efforts	12

3 CONSORTIUM MANAGEMENT	13

3.1 MANAGEMENT ISSUES	13

4. GENERAL ISSUES	15

ERRATA CORRIGE TO ANNEX I	15

INTERIM SOCIO ECONOMIC QUESTIONNAIRE, WORKFORCE QUESTIONNAIRE AND SCIENCE AND SOCIETY REPORTING QUESTIONNAIRE	15

ANNEX 1: UPDATED PLAN FOR USING AND DISSEMIANTING THE KNOWLEDGE	16

1. Introduction	21

1. Introduction	21

2. Exploitable knowledge and its Use	21

3. Dissemination of knowledge	21

1.1.	Dissemination Plan	21

1.2.	Scheduling	24

4. Metrics and Statistics	29

PUBLISHABLE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Summary description of project objectives

Anticipation is both a fascinating and relevant research theme in Cognitive Science and an unavoidable field of study for the future Cognitive Systems.

In fact, future Information Technology Systems will be intimately integrated with everyday environments, either as stand-alone objects or software entities. In this sense, a set of new challenging interaction problems among man, autonomous robots, software agents, and embedded smart devices will be present in the future environments. Only if these artificial systems will be able manifest anticipatory behaviours based on their capability to predict the results and actions, humans and/or other smart objects, they will be really useful, efficient, and compatible.

In order to be successfully autonomous, to deal with novel, dynamic, and trustworthy environments, such robots and devices need to have sophisticated cognitive capabilities based on anticipation: only a cognitive system with anticipatory mechanisms can be credible, adaptive and successful in interaction with the environment and in social interaction with other cognitive systems and with humans. The great challenge of systems performing like (and interacting with) humans requires endowing such systems with anticipation from lower to higher orders of cognition.

The general goal of the Mind RACES project is to investigate different anticipatory cognitive mechanisms and architectures in order to:

- build Cognitive Systems endowed with the ability to predict the outcome of their actions,

- build a model of future events,

- control their perception anticipating future stimuli and

- emotionally react to possible future scenarios.

The above general goal will be achieved by:

- incorporating anticipatory functionalities into existing cognitive models;

- improving anticipatory functionalities of existing cognitive models;

- integrating different anticipatory functionalities of cognitive models.

More specifically, four different phases have been identified in the project:

1) identification of typologies of problems which require different anticipatory cognitive capabilities (Attention, Monitoring and Control; Goal-directed behaviour, Pro-activity and Analogy; Anticipatory Emotions); this phase has allowed the design and the implementation of different appropriate scenarios.

2) improvement of existing anticipatory architectures and incorporating missing anticipatory functionalities in them. The performances of these architectures will be tested in the scenarios.

3) comparison, in the scenarios (in order to evaluate relative strengths and weaknesses) of anticipatory architectures implemented from different theoretical backgrounds. The approach undertaken in this project privileges the cognitive functions over the concrete implementation and will give a relevant contribute to the theoretical foundation of the mechanisms, extracting the conceptual core from the constraints of the single implementations.

4) design, implementation and testing, in the scenarios, of the cognitive architectures that integrate different kind of anticipatory mechanisms.

Simulations and real robots will be used both to improve and compare single anticipatory models and to integrate them in the same cognitive architectures.

Consortium

The MindRACES Consortium is composed by 8 partners:

ISTC-CNR – Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the National Research Council

IDSIA - Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale - Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana (Switzerland)

IST - Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal)

LUCS - Lunds Universitet (Sweden)

NBU - New Bulgarian University (Bulgaria)

NOZE - Noze s.r.l. (Italy)

OFAI - Oesterreichische Studiengesellschaft Fuer Kybernetik (Austria)

UW-COGSCI - Bayerische Julius-Maximilians Universitaet Wuerzburg (Germany)

Mind RACES consortium has been composed with partners that are expert in different scientific disciplines and complementary approaches to anticipation.

Coordination

The MindRACES Coordinator is:

Dr. Rino Falcone

ISTC-CNR – Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the National Research Council

Division of "Artificial Intelligence"

Via San Martino della Battaglia, 44

00185 Roma, Italy

email: rino.falcone@istc.cnr.it

tel: +39 06 44595253 fax: +39 06 44595243

URL: http://www.istc.cnr.it

Web Site

http://www.mindraces.org

Work Performed and Achieved Results

During the first twelve months the main work was concentrated on:

the design and the implementation of the scenarios (Workpackage 2),

the analysis of the different anticipatory cognitive capabilities:

Attention, Monitoring and Control (Workpackage 3);

Goal-directed behaviour, Pro-activity and Analogy (Workpackage 4);

Anticipatory Emotions (Workpackage 5)

with a critical analysis of the existing models;

the first analysis of possible integration of anticipatory mechanisms (workpackage 6).

In this first year of the project, the activities have mostly focussed on the design and the implementation of the scenarios. In fact, the common scenarios must be considered on the one hand, as a means to understand how the anticipatory capabilities in cognitive systems are necessary to solve specific tasks or are needed to improve performance; on the other hand, the scenarios represent the way to compare, evaluate and integrate different anticipatory approaches, functions, mechanisms. In this sense, also part of the activities realized in the other workpackages has taken into account the work developed in the scenarios workpackage.

An intensive activity about the identification, specification and implementation of the scenarios has been developed in different phases and in interactive modalities by the partners. In particular, a formal and structured discussion has been organized by means of the Project’s Portal. Three parallel thematic forums have been created reflecting the thematic workpackages. This activity lasted for three months (M4-M6).

The goal of the forum-based discussion were:

the identification of cognitive capacities dealing with anticipation and the specification of their function within the scenario

the identification of other functions for the cognitive capacity beyond those presented in the scenario

the proposal of models or analysis of that capacity with pointers to relevant literature

the description of mechanisms (implementable architectures + algorithms) that can be used to implement that function.

Individual partners based these discussions on the proposal of specific scenarios. For each theme, three cycles of discussions, each based on one scenario, were carried on. The scenario had the goal of triggering and being a concrete base to support the discussion on relevant issues.

This activity produced the individuation and the discussion of 27 different scenarios, raising many scientific and technological issues that were used as basis for several deliverables (D2.1, D3.1, D4.1 D5.1).

The work in Attention, Monitoring and Control (Workpackage 3) covered all the situations where a cognitive system selectively perceives and attends to its environment to improve the knowledge on its state. In particular:

Acquisition of information from the world

Selection of what is relevant in the sensorial stimulation (filtering the information flow; attentive mechanisms)

Organization and structuring of the sensorial stimulation

Selection of different interpretations for identical or similar sensorial stimulation in different contexts

Development of an interpretation for a new sensorial stimulation.

The work in Goal-directed behaviour, Pro-activity and Analogy (Workpackage 4) covered all situations where an agent uses models of the world that take into consideration the consequences of its own action, that is models of the world that predict the future state of the world on the basis of current state and the planned action (also known as “forward models”). In particular:

The role of forward models in different cognitive functions, e.g.: feedback control when the feedback takes too long to arrive, and in planning.

The evolutionary passage from reactive systems to systems endowed with forward models.

The routinization of planned behaviours: how planned behaviours are routinized, that is “compiled” into reactive anticipatory behaviours.

The shifts between the reactive and planning control systems.

The role of “social forward models” (“theories of mind”) for the prediction of the behaviours of other agents on the basis of the actions.

The appropriate “format” of expectations in order to be matched with sensorial stimuli and/or goal states.

The different kind of expectations (implicit, explicit, at different temporal abstractions) that can be used for different tasks.

The different kinds and functions of goals and goal states (internal motivational states, expected reinforcement, etc) and their different representations.

The work in Anticipatory Emotions (Workpackage 5) has been devoted to the identification of all the different relationships between anticipation and emotions, or better, between anticipatory behaviours or representations and mechanisms, and emotional responses. Broadly, three basic different relationships between emotion and anticipation have been identified:

Emotions eliciting an anticipatory (preparatory) behaviour.

Emotions due to Anticipatory Representations:

Emotion now as a response to the predicted future event;

Emotion at the very predicted moment due to the previous expectation and its (mis)match with reality.

Anticipating Future Emotions

On the basis of the previous activity, the final scenarios have been identified together with common environments. Such scenarios are representative of the anticipatory problems that are investigated by the different partners and are collected under common tasks.

Three final scenarios (Finding and Looking for Objects, Predicting in a Dynamic World, Guards and Thieves) were selected.

In the scenario Finding and Looking for Objects either the robot has a map of the House or the robot is constructing such a map on the fly. Both cases include search, optimization of the search (rejecting unlikely cases), recognition and report for the object found.

The scenario Predicting in a Dynamic World involves prediction of objects that are characterized by an intrinsic dynamics (the first three tasks involve looking at two games with moving objects and the task is to predict the movement of one or several objects. The last one deals with the prediction of a rolling ball with increasing levels of complexity).

In the scenario Guards and Thieves robots or agents can have two different roles (guards or thieves). Some objects are considered to be valuable and the thief’s aim is to find and pick them all. The thief has a store where it places all the valuables it succeeds to take away. The goal of the guard is to protect the valuables from theft.

From Month 9 to Month 12 all the partners have began the concrete implementation of the scenarios and environments that will be used to test the robots and architectures to be developed during the Project second year. Given the different approaches adopted in the project, this activity is faced differently by different partners. The results of this activity are discussed in the specific deliverable D8: Scenario Design and Implementation.

Publishable Results

At this stage of the project development, various publications, invited talks, organization of workshops and Symposia in different conferences (AAAI, GECCO, IJCAI, AAMAS, COGSCI, CIMCA) and about different themes show the wide range of applicable fields that can take advantage from MindRACES results (automation and control, psychology, decision support system, multi agent systems and virtual societies modelling).

1 PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS DURING THE REPORTING PERIOD

Three main objectives have been identified:

- the identification of a set of meaningful scenarios;

- the analysis of the different anticipatory cognitive capabilities;

- the first analysis of possible integration of anticipatory mechanisms.

The achieved results about these three directions of work are explained in detail in the following section about the workpackages.

WORKPACKAGES PROGRESS OF THE PERIOD

This section provides a summary report of the work performed at Wp level. The WPs reports are provided (in pdf format) to the EC in electronic form.

Wp2. Scenarios specification and evaluation

During the first twelve months, the activities of this WP have tackled the first objective (task 2.1) ended on M8 and the second one (task 2.2) ended on M12. The main activities have been:

Partners’ presentation of initial scenarios and informal discussion (M2)

Forum based structured discussion (M3-M6)

Individuation of six general scenarios (M7)

Refinement and final scenario specification (M7-M8)

Design and first implementation of the simulated and real environments and scenarios (M9-M12)

In particular, the final scenarios are representative of the anticipatory problems that are investigated by the different partners and are collected under common task. In this phase of the project the partners are interested in modelling different aspects in the same scenarios or identical tasks with different approaches. In addition, all the partners have began the concrete implementation of the scenarios and environments that will be used to test the robots and architectures to be developed during the Project second year.

Wp3. Attention, monitoring and control

The initial work in this work package concerned the identification and analysis of architectures that deal with attention, monitoring and control. This work can be divided into four parts that interact in different ways with the other work packages. First, we have identified a set of architectures and models. Second, scenarios have been specified (mainly in relation to WP2) that are appropriate for the problems of this work package. Third, we have initiated the work to enhance some of the architectures in more detail. Fourth, we have designed of the robot platforms that will be used within this and the other work packages.

Wp4. Goal-directed behaviour, pro-activity and analogy

Work on the work-package of goal-directed behavior, pro-activity and analogy has focused on gathering commonalities and differentiating the systems, the partners are interested in (leading to Deliverable 4.1), as well as on the continued development of the systems. The work-package is now in the state of system development – the partners are investigating, analyzing, and improving their respective systems and commonalities are continued to be explored in cooperation.

Wp5. Anticipatory emotions

As a first step in this workpackage, there was the attempt to identify potentialities and limitations of current anticipatory affective systems, both symbolic, and sub-symbolic. The architectures presented by the partners were further developed and discussed in some detail from the point of view of integrating emotions into the proposed scenarios.

The second step was to review literature and systems where emotions are part of the processing mechanisms for achieving intelligent behaviour, and in parallel, draw a line with anticipatory mechanisms. This analysis allowed the partners to clarify the link between emotion and anticipation. This link is presented in Deliverable D5_1 which resulted from a strong collaboration between the different partners involved in this workpackage.

Wp6: Integration

In fact the work about integration is -as planned in the Annex1- in its preliminary phase. The main activity in WP6, was concentrated on the preparation of Deliverable 6.1 Integrated architectures: theoretical analysis. All partners were asked to analyze the chosen scenarios and identify parts of them for which integration between two anticipatory mechanisms are required in order to achieve a task. Further, a taxonomy of cognitive mechanisms was specified and used in the analysis of the scenarios and the approaches of the partners.

Wp7. Dissemination and technological perspectives

The activities of WP7 are on one hand aimed at developing and maintaining the Mind RACES Web Portal:

http://www.mindraces.org online since December 2004

and setting up a robust infrastructure for future dissemination activities.

The workpackage is as well focused on the consolidation of the dissemination infrastructure and on the monitoring and tuning of previously started dissemination tools performances.

Other activities:

- Participation in conferences and exhibitions (a complete list is provided in the Updated plan for using and disseminating the knowledge and in D7.2).

- Tutorial activities on graduation thesis focused on frameworks and techniques suitable for anticipation have been carried on.

STATUS OF DELIVERABLES AND MILESTONES

Deliverables Status

DEL. NO.	DELIVERABLE NAME	WP NO.	LEAD PARTICIPANT	ESTIMATED PERSON-MONTHS	DELIVERY DATE

(PROJECT
MONTH)	STATUS*
D1	D7.1 Project presentation web site	7	NOZE	1	M1	PENDING EC REVIEW
D2	D7.2 Dissemination and use plan	7	NOZE	1	M6	PENDING EC REVIEW
D3	D2.1 Scenarios specification and problem finding	2	ISTC-CNR	1	M8	PENDING EC REVIEW
D4	D3.1 Critical comparison of attention, monitoring and control architectures	3	LUCS	1	M8	PENDING EC REVIEW
D5	D4.1 Critical comparison of mechanisms based on analogy, proactive and goal directed behaviour	4	UW-COGSCI	2	M8	PENDING EC REVIEW
D6	D5.1 Critical comparison of architectures which model motivation and emotions.	5	IST	2	M8	PENDING EC REVIEW
D7	D1.1 First annual progress research report	1	ISTC-CNR	1	M12	ON DELIVERY TO EC
D8	D2.2 Scenario design and implementation	2	ISTC-CNR	2	M12	ON DELIVERY TO EC
D9	D6.1 Design of integrated models	6	NBU	1	M12	ON DELIVERY TO EC
* status = not started – in preparation - pending internal review- on delivery to EC – pending EC review - accepted

Work-plan – Milestones List

The following table shows the list of milestones and the linked deliverables produced during the first year of activities.

task	milestone	deliverable	wp no.	date due	actual delivery date	Lead contractor
-	M1.1 Kick-off meeting	-	1	M1	M2	ISTC-CNR
-	M1.2 Co-ordination meeting	-	1	M6	M7	ISTC-CNR
-	M1.3 Co-ordination meeting	-	1	M11	M12	ISTC-CNR (IST)
FIRST ANNUAL RESEARCH PROGRESS REPORT	D1.1	1	M12	M12	ISTC-CNR
2.1	M2.1: Specification and analysis of six scenarios.	D2.1	2	M8	M8	ISTC-CNR
2.2	M2.2: Concrete implementation of three scenarios.	D2.2	2	M12	M12	ISTC-CNR
3.1	M3.1: Examination and comparison of existing models that deal with Attention, Monitoring and Control.	D3.1	3	M8	M8	LUCS
4.1	M4.1: Analysis and comparison of existing models that deal with Goal directed behaviour, Pro-activity and Analogy.	D4.1	4	M8	M8	UW-COGSCI
5.1	M5.1: Analysis and comparison of existing models that deal with Anticipatory Emotions.	D5.1	5	M8	M8	IST
6.1	M6.1: Integration through theoretical modelling.	D6.1	6	M12	M12	NBU
7.1	M7.1 Communication insfrastructure building and mantaining.	D7.1 + D7.3	7	M1	M1	NOZE
7.2	M7.2 Dissemination	D7.2	7	M6	M	NOZE

Work-packages efforts

Activity type
ISTC-CNR	LUCS	UW-COGSCI	NBU	IST	OFAI	IDSIA-SUPSI	NOZE	TOTAL ACTIVITIES

RTD/Innovation activities
WP 2 Scenarios Specification and Implementation	23+0,2*	3+0,5*	0,5+2*	5,20+2,9*	3,89	4,30+0,9*	6+0,3*	5,6	51,49+6,8*
WP 3 Attention, Monitoring and Control	8+0,2*	6,7+3,7*	1+2*	0,90	0	0,30	3+0,3*	2,3	22,2+6,20*
WP 4 Goal Directed Behaviour, Pro-activity and Analogy	11,5+0,2*	1+0,5*	3+4,5*	9,20+4,9*	0	5,26+0,5*	2+0,3*	4,20	36,2+10,9*
WP 5 Emotion as anticipation in computational architectures	10,5	1+1*	0	1	2,4	0	0+0,3*	2,4	17,30+1,3*
WP 6 Integration	2,5	0	0	2,80+3*	0	0	4+1*	4,7	14+4*
WP 7 Dissemination and technological exploitation	3,5	0,3+0,3*	0+0,5*	0+0,1*	0	0	1+1*	2,80	7,60+1,9*
Total research	59+0,6*	12+6*	4,5+9*	19,10+10,9*	6,20	9,86+1,4*	16+3,2*	22	148,70+31,11*

Consortium management activities
WP 1 Project Management	4,5	0	0	0+0,2*	0,16	0,31	0,3	0,6	5,91+0,2*
Total consort. Management	4,5	0	0	0,2*	0,16	0,31	0,3	0,6	5,87+0,2*

TOTAL per Participant	63,5+0,6*	12+6*	4,5+9*	19,10+11*	6,42	10,17+1,4*	16,3+3,2*	22,6

Overall TOTAL EFFORTS
154,6+31,31*
*= unfunded efforts

Please note that, the figures included in the table above are the same reported in “person Month status table MindRACES” below. Nevertheless, there is a mismatch; this “Work-package effort” table includes 0.6 p-m not funded, deployed by CNR-ISTC (FC cost model). This figure is not calculated in the “person Month status table MindRACES” file, where only the AC partners are foreseen to report their unfunded efforts.

3 CONSORTIUM MANAGEMENT

The overall project management is in the care of WP1. The first year of the project has been spent building up the project administrative infrastructure taking the project off the ground heading toward the first year review.

Actions covered several fields:

Built the project office and established relations with other contractors

Coordination of technical activities of the project as foreseen by Annex I

Distribution of the EU pre-financing on the basis of an estimate of costs presented by each partner at the beginning of the year. Gathering the form C and audit certificates at the end of the reporting period.

Good collaboration with the Commission Project Officer (CPO)

Implementation of an efficient reporting system.

Implementation of the financial and administrative management.

Supervision of the implementation of the public and internal sections of the MindRACES web portal: http://www.mindraces.org

Dissemination activities (participation in conferences and organisation of the AAAI 05 fall symposium “FROM REACTIVE TO ANTICIPATORY COGNITIVE EMBODIED SYSTEMS” http://www.aaai.org/Symposia/Fall/2005/fss-05-05.html to be held in Virginia, in November 2005).

Internal meetings have been and will be organised in accordance with the agenda suggested in annex I.

In this phase of the project, the coordinator decided to concentrate the efforts on the technical and administrative organisation of the work. Basically, all the management tasks foreseen in the Annex I have been successfully achieved following the commitment.

Notwithstanding several contacts with scientific press in Italy and abroad, the coordinator has kept a minor tone in terms of visibility in order to profit by this media later on in a more fruitful phase of the project.

3.1 MANAGEMENT ISSUES

This first periodic activity report and the periodic management report have been produced in time notwithstanding the overlap with other deliverables due on month 12. A considerable effort has been made by the partners to produce in time all the documents required for the periodic management report and periodic activity report and a good work has been made by partners to reconcile reporting duties with research and scientific working methods.

On the whole, the main issue concerns the recruitment of qualified personnel. This has been slow and has meant a low expenditure for the first reporting period for all partners. The problem is expected to be compensated later on in the project.

4. GENERAL ISSUES

ERRATA CORRIGE TO ANNEX I

The six-month technical reports foreseen in chapter 6.1 of annex I is not listed in the “Deliverable list”. Nevertheless the consortium is going to respect this commitment at month 6 – 18 – 30.

INTERIM SOCIO ECONOMIC QUESTIONNAIRE, WORKFORCE QUESTIONNAIRE AND SCIENCE AND SOCIETY REPORTING QUESTIONNAIRE

Following instruction received from the CPO concerning the malfunctioning of the SESAM tool, the interim reports foreseen in the “project reporting in FP6 - Guidance notes” have not been submitted.

ANNEX 1: UPDATED PLAN FOR USING AND DISSEMIANTING THE KNOWLEDGE

Project n:

511 931

Project acronym:

MIND RACES

Project title:

MIND RACES: from Reactive to Anticipatory Cognitive Embodied Systems

Instrument: STREP

Thematic Priority: Information Society Technology

UPDATED PLAN FOR USING AND DISSEMINATING THE KNOWLEDGE

(UPDATE TO D 7.2)

Period covered from/to: 01/04/2004 - 01/10/2005	Date of preparation: 30/10/2005

Start date of the project: 01/10/2004	Duration: 36 months

Project coordinator name: Rino Falcone	Revision: revised

Project coordinator organisation name: ISTC-CNR

Document identifier:	UPDATED_PLAN_FOR_USING_AND_DISSEMINATING_THE_KNOWLEDGE_N_1
Date:	10/10/2005
Work package:	ALL
Partner(s):	ISDSIA, IST, ISTC-CNR, LUCS, NBU, NOZE, OFAI, UW-COGSCI
Lead Partner:	NOZE
Document status:	Verified and approved
Deliverable identifier:	D1.1_PUDK_N_1

Delivery Slip
Name	Partner	Date	Signature
From	Gianguglielmo Calvi	NOZE	10/11/2005

Verified	Rino Falcone, Susanna Tosi	ISTC-CNR	11/11/2205

Approved by	Rino Falcone	ISTC-CNR	12/11/2005

Files
Software Products	User files
MS Word™	UPDATED_PLAN_FOR_USING_AND_DISSEMINATING_THE_KNOWLEDGE_N_1

Project information
Project acronym:	Mind Races
Project full title:

Mind RACES: from Reactive to Anticipatory

Cognitive Embodied Systems

Proposal/Contract no.:	IST-511931
Project Manager:	ISTC-CNR
Name:	Rino Falcone
Address:	ISTC –CNR Via San Martino della Battaglia 44 00185 Rome, Italy
Phone:	+39 06 44595253
Fax:	+39 06 44595243
E-mail	rino.falcone@istc.cnr.it

CONTENT

1. Introduction	21

2. Exploitable knowledge and its Use	21

3. Dissemination of knowledge	21

Dissemination Plan	21

Scheduling	24

4. Metrics and Statistics	29

1. Introduction

This document is intended to be an appendix of the deliverable 1.1 and is following and integrating the Dissemination and Use plan scheduled and delivered to the EC on M6 of the project. As evolving document, at this stage, it is principally an overview of the dissemination activities that the Wp7 and the contractors have undertaken during the first year of activities.

This update plan is, therefore, referring to the same structure and indexes for dissemination evaluation that can be found in the D7.2 deliverable.

2. Exploitable knowledge and its Use

MindRACES was presented with talks and presentations in several international conferences as AAAI, GECCO, IJCAI, AAMAS, COGSCI, CIMCA, etc. Furthermore, the partners produced publications disseminating the Mind Races results in a wide range of fields like automation and control, psychology, decision support systems, robotics, multi agent systems and virtual societies modelling. In each of these fields there is a potential for exploiting the Mind RACES results. In any case, it is premature – as scheduled in the Annex1- to consider the scientific advances on anticipation produced by the project in this first year of activities as already directly exploitable for industrial or commercial applications.

3. Dissemination of knowledge

The document provides a synthetic overview of dissemination activities undertaken by the partners in the last six months of the project. Updated dissemination channels previously presented in the D7.2 are shown. New dissemination channels identified since the D7.2 publication are also discussed.

Dissemination Plan

The dissemination plan, as summarized scheduling of the whole dissemination effort of the Mind RACES Consortium, has been provided in the D7.2 “Dissemination and Use plan” previously released. The tagging scheme of the activities carried on by the consortium is hereby recalled:

[STATUS: PLANNED]: the corresponding dissemination item was identified to be relevant for the Consortium. No action has been undertaken so far, an accurate scheduling will be included in future reporting documents.

[STATUS: IN PROGRESS]: the corresponding dissemination item is going to be activated or is related to a relevant announced event. Either Conferences or Workshops which programme and dates are still tentative or contacts with third parties that aren’t yet settled with some contracts or submitted papers pending the referees approval.

[STATUS: ACTIVE] : the corresponding dissemination item is currently active. For instance submitted and accepted papers, published documents, online resources, future and certain participation in organized conferences and exhibitions.

[STATUS: COMPLETE] : the dissemination action is successfully concluded, e.g. Conference already held, or a talk already discussed. On the other hand this flag can include also papers previously submitted and then rejected.

[TYPE:x] : this flag characterizes the type of the dissemination item. Possible values are:

C: Conference or Workshops; it includes organisation activities, invited speeches and demo presentations, presentation of papers in conferences and workshops.

P: Publications; it includes any kind of published document e.g. articles, proceedings, books, papers, both in scientific and in non-scientific publication media.

E: Events; it includes research, commercial and industrial exhibitions.

T: Talks and Seminars; it includes university talks and seminars both academic or non-academic audience.

S: Schools; it includes the organization of schools (winter or summer schools) for undergraduate, postgraduate and postdoc students.

A: Alliances; it includes worthy contacts (expression of interest, gentlemen’s agreement or cooperation contracts about future uses of Mind RACES results) with commercial and industrial organizations at a various level.

W: Web and other media; in includes any other kind of dissemination means including Internet (web pages, forums, e-mails, newsletters, radio and television.

[PARTNER:xxxx] : this flag identifies the name of the partner mainly involved in the current channel.

[ID:xxxxx] : it is the unique identifier used to refer the current item in tables, when needed.

With reference to the relevance of the conferences, hereby is defined the sorting parameters used to organize the lists:

Global Relevance: is a qualitative measure that takes into account aspects such as the level of international audience, the importance of the place where the item is done (when applicable), the scientific or industrial importance of the themes and results discussed and showed by the item.

Involvement: is a qualitative measure of the level of involvement of the Mind RACES Consortium in the set up and in the sponsoring of the item. For example, conferences organized by the Consortium, conferences organized by third party organizations in conjunction with MindRACES contractors, conferences supported or sponsored by Mind RACES partners.

Te following lists are therefore sorted in a descent order. Item considered of major interest in respect of the above parameters are shown first.

Scheduling

This section is focused on new or updated dissemination activities. Activities which status has not been modified are not included in the following list and can be found into the first “Dissemination and Use Plan” (Deliverable 7.2) released by the Consortium on May and available online in the Mind RACES Portal at:

http://www.mindraces.org/documents/deliverable/deliverable7/

Dissemination Meetings

Dissemination items that belong to categories C (Conferences or Workshops), T (Talks and Seminars) E (Events, Exhibitions) or S (Schools) are generalized as Meetings.

ISTC organized and take part with various talks and presentations to the AAAI 2005 Fall Symposium on Anticipatory Cognitive Embodied Systems November 3-6, 2005, Hyatt Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia; (http://www.mindraces.org/events/fss05; http://www.aaai.org/Symposia/Fall/2005/fss-05-05.html)

[STATUS:COMPLETED][ID:FSACES2005][TYPE:C][PARTNER:ISTC]

NOZE was present at SMAU05, IT and Research international Exhibition in Milan 19-23 October 2005, with a Mind RACES stand for exhibition (http://www.smau.it).

[STATUS:COMPLETED][ID:SMAU2005][TYPE:E][PARTNER:NOZE]

Presentation about Mind RACES at AISB 2005, April 14-15 2005, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, England. Cristiano Castelfranchi (ISTC-CNR), Carlos Martino and Ana Paiva (IST)

[STATUS:COMPLETED][ID:AISB2005][TYPE:C][PARTNER:ISTC;IST]

Gianguglielmo Calvi will talk at CIMCA05, International Conference on Computational Intelligence for Modelling Control and Automation, in Vienna, 28-30 November 2005; (http://www.ise.canberra.edu.au/conferences/cimca05/)

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:CIMCA2005][TYPE:C][PARTNER:NOZE]

Presentation about Mind RACES at Swedish AI Society, April 13-14 2005, Västerås, Sweden. Johansson B. (LUND) and Balkenius C. (LUND)

[STATUS:COMPLETED][ID:SWAISOCIETY2005][TYPE:C][PARTNER:LUCS]

NBU will be present with the ABiALS Workshop at SAB06 in Rome, 25-30 September 2006; (http://www.isab.org.uk/sab06/)

[STATUS:IN PROGRESS][ID:ABIALS2006][TYPE:C][PARTNER:NBU]

IDSIA invited talk about anticipation at TUM -Technische Universität München – (http://www.tu-muenchen.de/)

[STATUS:PLANNED][ID:TUM200x][TYPE:T][PARTNER:IDSIA]

IDSIA invited talk about anticipation at USI – Universitá della Svizzera Italiana -(http://www.unisi.ch/)

[STATUS:PLANNED][ID:USI200x][TYPE:T][PARTNER:IDSIA]

Gianguglielmo Calvi will held discussions on cognitive science and applications development in the cognitive science domain at University of Pisa. [STATUS:PLANNED][ID:TALKPISA200x][TYPE:T][PARTNER:NOZE]

NBU will be present with the ABiALS Workshop at SAB06 in Rome, 25-30 September 2006; (http://www.isab.org.uk/sab06/)

[STATUS:IN PROGRESS][ID:ABIALS2006][TYPE:C][PARTNER:NBU]

Dissemination Documents

Dissemination items that belong to categories P (Publications) and W (Web and other media) are generalized as Documents.

Contract Nets for Evaluating Agent Trustworthiness - Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence ”volume number 3577. Special Issue on "Trusting Agents for trusting Electronic Societies". Rino Falcone (ISTC), Giovanni Pezzulo (ISTC), Cristiano Castelfranchi (ISTC), Gianguglielmo Calvi (NOZE)

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID: LNCS3577.2][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

Special Issue on "Trusting Agents for trusting Electronic Societies" - Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence ”volume number 3577. Rino Falcone (ISTC), Suzanne Barber, Jordi Sabater e Munindar Singh

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:LNCS3577.1][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

Modelling Expectations in BDI agents - AAAI 2005 Fall Symposium on Anticipatory Cognitive Embodied Systems. Emiliano Lorini (ISTC), Rino Falcone (ISTC)

[STATUS:IN PROGRESS][ID:AAAIFALLSYMP2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

Fuzzy-based Schema Mechanisms in AKIRA – International Conference on Computational Intelligence for Modelling Control and Automation, in Vienna, 28-30 November 2005; Giovanni Pezzulo (ISTC) and Gianguglielmo Calvi (NOZE)

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:AKIRACIMCA2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

Mind as an Anticipatory Device: for a Theory of Expectations – AAAI Technical Report for the Fall Symposium "From Reactive to Anticipatory Cognitive Embodied Systems". Cristiano Castelfranchi (ISTC)

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:AAAIWS2005a][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

Emotion and Anticipation - Journal on Cognition and Emotion. Cristiano Castelfranchi (ISTC), Maria Miceli (ISTC)

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:JCOGEMO2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

Modelling Expectations in Cognitive Agents – AAAI Technical Report for the Fall Symposium "From Reactive to Anticipatory Cognitive Embodied Systems". Emiliano Lorini (ISTC) and Rino Falcone (ISTC)

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:AAAIWS2005b][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

A Neural-Network Reinforcement-Learning Model of Domestic Chicks that Learn to Localise the Centre of Closed Arenas – Journal of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London - B. Francesco Mannella, Gianluca Baldassarre (ISTC) [STATUS:IN PROGRESS][ID:PHTRANS2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

Robots with Anticipation and Attention - In Funk, P. , Rognvaldsson, T., and Xiong, N. (Eds.) Advances in Artificial Intelligence in Sweden 2005 (pp. 202-204). Johansson B. (LUND) and Balkenius C. (LUND)

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:ADVANCESAISWEDEN2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:LUCS]

Event Prediction and Object Motion Estimation in the Development of Visual Attention -Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics, Nara, Japan. Johansson B. (LUND) and Balkenius C. (LUND)

[STATUS: COMPLETE][ID:EPIGENJAPPRED2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:LUCS]

Distributed Representations and “Flexible” Modularity in Hybrid Architectures – In proceedings of COGSCI 2005. Giovanni Pezzulo (ISTC) , Gianguglielmo Calvi (NOZE) [STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:COGSCI2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC-NOZE]

The role for context in motor development in autism - Epigenetic Robotics 2005, Nara, Japan. Johansson B. (LUND) and Balkenius C. (LUND)	[STATUS:COMPLETE][ID:EPIGENJAPAUT2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:LUCS]

It's a Child's Game: Investigating Cognitive Development with Playing Robots - Proceedings of the International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), Osaka, Japan. Johansson B. (LUND) and Balkenius C. (LUND)

[STATUS: COMPLETE][ID:ICDLJAP2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:LUCS]

Extracted Global Structure Makes Local Building Block Processing Effective in XCS - GECCO 2005. Martin V. Butz (UW), Martin Pelikan, Xavier Llora, David E. Goldberg [STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:GECCOXCS2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:UW]

Kernel-based, Ellipsoidal Conditions in the Real-Valued XCS Classifier System - GECCO 2005. Martin V. Butz (UW)

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:GECCOKB2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:UW]

Inhibition in Cognitive Development: Contextual Impairments in Autism- International Conference on Development and Learning, 2005 . Johansson B. (LUND) and Balkenius C. (LUND)

[STATUS:COMPLETE][ID:INHCOGDEV2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:LUCS]

Effects of Early Sensorimotor Disorder on Contextual Learning in Autism - CONTEXT 2005 . Johansson B. (LUND) and Balkenius C. (LUND), Petra Björne

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:CONTEXTAUT2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:LUCS]

Synthetic Emotivectors - AISB 2005. Carlos Martino (IST) and Ana Paiva(IST);

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:AISBSE2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:IST]

TOM & BIC Intentional Behavioral Communication as Based on Theory of Mind - AISB 2005. Cristiano Castelfranchi (ISTC)

[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:AISBTOMBIC2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

Gradient Descent Methods in Learning Classier Systems: Improving XCS Performance in Multistep Problems - IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation , March 2005, , Japan. Martin V. Butz (UW), David E. Goldberg, PierLuca Lanzi [STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:IEEEEVOLUTIONARY2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:UW]

A Reinforcement-Learning Neural-Network Planner – Unknown Journal. Francesco Mannella, Gianluca Baldassarre (ISTC) [STATUS:PLANNED][ID:RLNNPLAN2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

Fiducia e Sfiducia - italian book "La mente, gli altri, le emozioni" Editors: Armando Editore. Rino Falcone (ISTC), Cristiano Castelfranchi (ISTC) [STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:AAAIWS2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

Punti di forza e di debolezza dei modelli di apprendimento per rinforzo: un'applicazione all'orientamento spaziale dei pulcini – Sistemi Intelligenti. Francesco Mannella, Gianluca Baldassarre (ISTC)

[STATUS:IN PROGRESS][ID:SISINT2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:ISTC]

L’Artificio Dell’Intelligenza – 2006 Article publication by Gianguglielmo Calvi (NOZE) on the Linux & C Italian Magazines about artificial intelligence and open-source synergy [STATUS:PLANNED][ID:LINUXM2006][TYPE:P][PARTNER:NOZE]

Paper about control of omnidirectional robots from IDSIA Partner [STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:OMNIROBOTCONTROL2005][TYPE:P][PARTNER:IDSIA]

Partnerships and Strategic Alliances

Dissemination items that belong to categories A (Alliances) are generalized as Partnerships and Strategic Alliances.

The AAAI Fall Symposium has been the first international event promoted by the MindRACES project. Beyond the scientific presentations of the project results by several partners (ISTC-CNR, UW-COGSCI, LUCS and OFAI) a specific dissemination session about the project has been organized. The international venue has been also used to disseminate European scientific achievements to American scholars in order to create possible future convergences. Possible collaborations (e.g. MIT MediaLab) are being explored.

[STATUS:IN PROGRESS][ID: FSACES2005][TYPE:A][PARTNER: ISTC-CNR]

Possible synergies have also been envisaged between MindRACES and RobotCUB projects (both funded under the Cognitive Systems Activity).

[STATUS:IN PROGRESS][ID: RCUBS][TYPE:A][PARTNER: ISTC-CNR]

It is also under scrutiny the possibility of collaboration between the MindRACES and the MACS consortia. OFAI is partner in both projects and will help envisage commonalities and complementarities.

[STATUS:IN PROGRESS][ID: MACS2005][TYPE:A][PARTNER: OFAI]

During the SMAU 2005 exhibition, NOZE contacted different enterprises and commercial organization. Particularly interesting and promising was a meeting with a consultant of the SEAC02 enterprise (http://www.seac02.it/) expert in Virtual and Augmented Reality Technologies. The SEAC02 consultant was very interested in the Mind RACES potential technologies impact and he intends to keep in touch with the Consortium to establish a future alliance and to evaluate the possibility to integrate SEAC02 proprietary virtual reality software with our cognitive models and software.

[STATUS:IN PROGRESS][ID:SMAUALLIANCE2005][TYPE:A][PARTNER:NOZE]

Martin Butz, from UW, started collaboration with Martin Pelikan from the CS department at the University of Missouri, St. Louis and with David E. Goldberg at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.	[STATUS:ACTIVE][ID:MISSOURIILLINOIS2005][TYPE:A][PARTNER:UW]

The IDSIA Partner is establishing a strong relationship with the TU Munich Robotics. In particular, J. Schmidhuber has got a professorship there.

[STATUS:IN PROGRESS][ID:TUROBOTICS2005][TYPE:A][PARTNER:IDSIA]

4. Metrics and Statistics

Level of Participation

The Level of Participation measures the current response around the project. It can be defined as a sum of all contacts (Organizations, People..) that join the Mind RACES Community and that plan to use or feel already committed to use the project results for their own purposes. A preliminary index of the level of participation is given by the following screenshots showing the

response on the web for the Mind RACES Portal and for the AKIRA Project linked resource.

In detail we have :

MONTH	DISTINCT VISITORS	NUMBER OF VISITS	PAGES	ACCESSES	BANDWIDTH
Jul 2005	287	443	1875	22790	334.07 MB
Aug 2005	312	478	1483	15740	165.84 MB
Sep 2005	344	569	2298	28519	233.49 MB

Since its very beginning (January 2005) the number of web contact is constantly increased until a medium contact rate of ≈330 distinct visitors per/month was reached. Last 3 months

also show a new upward trend of ≈5% in respect to the average contact rate reached during the current year.

Level of Activity

It measures the amount of activities between Partners. It takes into account the number of documents (email, summaries, posts, internals, …) shared and exchanged between the Partners during the project. During the second half of this first year of activities the following statistics are available:

1 new discussion forum started Pro-active discussion on Topics of Anticipation Theory by Cristiano Castelfranchi of the ISTC-CNR.

2 mailing lists (mindraces-research and mindraces-dissemination) to simplify data exchange and discussion in a thematic way were added.

Next tables show updated documents dataflow statistics and forums usage statistics:

May 2005

FORUM DISCUSSIONS	DOCUMENTS

(internals)	EMAIL

(in + out)	TOTAL
57	21	206	284

October 2005

FORUM DISCUSSIONS	DOCUMENTS

(internals)	EMAIL

(in + out)	TOTAL
63	38	606	707

FORUM VIEWS
1517

We can notice that in the last 6 months there was a huge increment in the e-mailing activity (≈300%; also thanks to the MindRACES-research and MindRACES-dissemination specific mailing lists).

Level of Effectiveness

A measure of how much effective is the work done so far and planned to do by the Mind RACES Consortium is also necessary. This measure take into account previously scheduled activities trying to compare the current distribution between their different status (PLANNED, IN PROGRESS, ACTIVE, COMPLETE). The result is shown into two tables that are able to clarify the current and, in part, the incoming dissemination status.

Synthetic Channels Distribution Effectiveness

May 2005

Channels

VS

Status	PLANNED	IN PROGRESS	ACTIVE	COMPLETE	TOTAL
Conferences and Workshops

9	3	1	13
Publications

9	4	2	15
Events	3	1	1	1	6
Seminars and Talks

1	5
6
Schools
2	2
4
Industry Relationships

1	3
4
Web and Other Media
1
1

October 2005

Channels

VS

Status	PLANNED	IN PROGRESS	ACTIVE	COMPLETE	TOTAL
Conferences and Workshops

8	4	5	17
Publications

2	11	11	7	31
Events	3	1	1	2	7
Seminars and Talks

1	1	7
9
Schools
2	2
4
Industry Relationships

2	4	2
8
Web and Other Media
1
1

Major efforts can be identified in the publications and in the conferences dissemination tasks.

The former shows an increment of ≈100% while the latter show an increment of ≈30%. Both these measures have been taken into serious consideration to evaluate the quality of the current dissemination status of the Mind RACES Consortium.

Detailed Channels Distribution Effectiveness

October 2005

PLANNED	IN PROGRESS	ACTIVE	COMPLETE	TYPE
SMAU200x	X
E
WEBBIT200x	X
E
FTSHOW200x	X
E
TALKPISA200x	X
T
LINUXM2006	X
P
NOZEPRTNSHP200x	X
A
RLNNPLAN2005	X
P
SMAUALLIANCE2005
X
A
ABIALS2006
X
C
OSC2006
X
E
CSUP
X
T
ISSCS2006
X
S
IWLCS2006
X
C
GECCO200x
X
C
SAB2006
X
C
PPSN2006
X
C
IJCNN2006
X
C
SACESPP2005
X
C
EMCSR2006
X
C
ISI2005
X
S
LCHC200X
X
P
PFTCIMR200x
X
P
LFARD200x
X
P
TLSTM200x
X
P
FNPBIIT200x
X
P
FMMI200x
X
P
SMDTR200x
X
P
EHNOLS200x
X
P
MNLDSE200x
X
P
AXIS200x
X
A
SONY200x
X
A
EUTEMA200x
X
A
PHTRANS2005
X
P
SISINT2005
X
P
TUROBOTICS2005
X
A
TUM200x
X
T
USI200x
X
T
OMNIROBOTCONTROL2005
X
P
MISSOURIILLINOIS2005
X
A
AKIRACIMCA2005
X
P
CIMCA2005
X
C
FSACES2005
X
C
CONTEXT2005
X
C
ICANN2005
X
T
NN2005
X
T
UP2005
X
T
VSC2005
X
S
COLT2005
X
C
ICML2005
X
T
ATHENA200x
X
T
BAW200x
X
S
SCW200x
X
E
DCCEAKIRA2005
X
P
NBUCONTEXT2005
X
P
RBEOLS200x
X
P
ASCSJ200x
X
P
RAN2005
X
W
COGSCI2005
X
P
ADVANCESAISWEDEN2005
X
P
LNCS3577.1
X
P
LNCS3577.2
X
P
AAAIWS2005
X
P
MISSOURIILLINOIS2005
X
A
AAAIFALLSYMP2005
X	P
SMAU2005
X	E
EPIGENJAPPRED2005
X	P
EPIGENJAPAUT2005
X	P
ICDLJAP2005
X	P
INHCOGDEV2005
X	P
CSKO2004
X	C
OSC2005
X	E
AKIRAMASF2004
X	P
AKIRAMABS2004
X	P
ICDL2005
X	C
EPR2005
X	C
SWAISOCIETY2005
X	C
AISB2005
X	C

ACTIVE

vs

OTHERS

TOTAL	8	26	28	14*	45%

(*):not computed into the final percentage

MR_PERIODIC_ACTIVITY_REPORT_N_1.dot

Mind RACES: from Reactive to Anticipatory Cognitive Embodied Systems	Page 35 of 35

MR_interim_report_n_1

MR contractors

2005-11-15

Susanna Tosi

cnr