On the role of the Multi-Level and Multi-Scale Organization of Behaviour: Evidences from Evolutionary Robotics Experiments

The Faculty of Informatics is pleased to announce a seminar given by Stefano Nolfi 

DATE: Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014
PLACE: USI Lugano campus, room A24, Red building (Via G. Buffi 13)
TIME: 11:30

ABSTRACT:
In this talk I will claim that behavioural and cognitive capacities of embodied agents can be properly characterized as dynamical processes, originating from the agents/environmental interactions, displaying a multi-level and multi-scale organization. More specifically I will review a series of evolutionary robotics experiments that illustrate how the multi-level nature of these systems can enable: generalization processes that operate at the level of entire behaviours, the progressive expansion of the robots behavioural skills, and behavioural compositionality.

BIO:
Stefano Nolfi is research director at the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and director of the Laboratory of Autonomous Robots and Artificial Life of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies. His research activities focus on the evolution and development of behavioral and cognitive skills in natural and artificial embodied agents (robots). He authored/co-authored more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific publications including a monograph book on Evolutionary Robotics published by MIT Press in 2000, and an edited book on Evolution of Communication and Language in Embodied Agents published by Springer Verlag in 2010.

HOST: Prof. Alexander Förster