Developing social action capabilities in a humanoid robot using an interaction history architecture

“This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.” DOI: 10.1109/ICHR.2008.4756013We present experimental results for the humanoid robot Kaspar2 engaging in a simple “peekaboo” interaction game with a human partner. The robot develops the capability to engage in the game by using its history of interactions coupled with audio and visual feedback from the interaction partner to continually generate increasingly appropriate behaviour. The robot also uses facial expressions to feedback its level of reward to the partner. The results support the hypothesis that reinforcement of time-extended experiences through interaction allows a robot to act appropriately in an interaction

A middleware for a large array of cameras

Large arrays of cameras are increasingly being employed for producing high quality image sequences needed for motion analysis research. This leads to the logistical problem with coordination and control of a large number of cameras. In this paper, we used a lightweight multi-agent system for coordinating such camera arrays. The agent framework provides more than a remote sensor access API. It allows reconfigurable and transparent access to cameras, as well as software agents capable of intelligent processing. Furthermore, it eases maintenance by encouraging code reuse. Additionally, our agent system includes an automatic discovery mechanism at startup, and multiple language bindings. Performance tests showed the lightweight nature of the framework while validating its correctness and scalability. Two different camera agents were implemented to provide access to a large array of distributed cameras. Correct operation of these camera agents was confirmed via several image processing agents

Library consortia in Germany

Whenever German librarians talk about consortia in the presence of lawyers (even if they are libarians themselves) they meet with vehement protest. In German the legal term „consortium“ is restricted to a relatively narrow meaning. In „Meyers neues Lexikon“ from 1993 it is defined as: „Bank merger for stock exchange dealings and credit transactions ...“ And from the same source the definition of consortial business: „Syndicate business for which several members (mostly banks) join up for a consortium. Reasons for forming a consortium are: 1. Overstraining of the financial resources of each individual consortium member, 2. spreading of risks ...“ 1 While risk-spreading is not really an issue for libraries, their financial resources are undoubtedly overstrained. There are three reasons: the pricing policy – that is to say the heavy annual price rise – of the publishers, the rapidly increasing number of academic publications not likely to slow down in the foreseeable future as well as the expectations and wishes of our users and customers, the scientific community. Therefore, the term „purchasing association“ may be the correct one from a (German) legal point of view. As in many similar cases the term was adopted from an Anglo-American background with a much broader meaning: „Partnership, association. Now more specifically an association of business, banking or manufacturing organizations.“ 2 In Germany the term „consortium“ is now widely used for joint actions of libraries

Robot Self-Characterisation of Experience Using Trajectories in Sensory-Motor Phase Space

Peer reviewe

Exploring the Design Space of Robot Appearance and Behavior in an Attention-Seeking Living Room Scenario for a Robot Companion

This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.---- Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. --DOI : 10.1109/ALIFE.2007.36781

Close encounters : spatial distances between people and a robot of mechanistic appearance

Peer reviewe

Bologna, the Netherlands and information science

This paper addresses the development of the department of Information Studies at the Universiteit van Amsterdam over the years and especially the impact of the Bologna Agreement on the content and educational form of the curriculum. It includes both outlines of the programmes as well as reflection on the educational methods. The accreditation procedures are also described. The paper ends with a reflection on the outcomes of the aims of the Bologna agreement. The text is an extension and elaboration of the paper presented at the EUCLID conference Restructuring and adapting to European standards: overcoming regional variations in needs and interests in education for LIS . 16 18 October 2002. Thessaloniki, Greece

Acces to Grey Content: An Analysis of Grey Literature based on Citation and Survey Data: A Follow-up Study

Grey literature, an area of interest to special librarians and information professionals, can be traced back a half-century. However, grey literature as a specialized field in information studies is less than a decade old. At GL'97 in Luxembourg, grey literature was redefined “as information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishers (i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body).” The subject area was broadened and the need for continuing research and instruction pursued. The results of an online survey carried out in 2004 compared with survey results a decade prior indicate two changes: (1) a move to more specialization in the field of grey literature and (2) a move to more balance in activities related to research and teaching as compared with the processing and distribution of grey literature. It is not that the activities of processing and distribution are today of less concern, but technological advances and the Internet may have made them less labour intensive. The burden that grey literature poised to human resources and budgets appears to have been reduced enough that the benefits of the content of grey literature is discovered. And this discovery of a wealth of knowledge and information is the onset to further research and instruction in the field of grey literature. This research is a follow-up to two projects carried out in 2004. One was a citation analysis based on the published papers in the GL Conference Proceedings and the other was a general survey, which dealt with the response of information professionals to key issues and topics in the field of grey literature. In this study, we seek not only to update and integrate the data from the citation analysis but at the same time we introduce the instrument of an author survey in order to better assess the work and expectations of those who are actually doing research and authoring papers on the topic of grey literature. These are the meta-authors. The idea behind the method carried out in this study is that by using the same pool of authors survey data linked to citation data will allow for a clearer demonstration of the impact of their research, where only part of the impact is covered by citation analysis alone. Hopefully, the new combined results will provide a better profile of these meta-authors, who are also the source of GreyNet's knowledge and information base. This could lead to the subsequent development of information policies and services that are more in line with the needs of authors and researchers, whereby their results would become even more accessible well beyond the grey circuit.La communication présente les résultats d'une analyse des citations dans les communications des conférences internationales sur la littérature grise depuis 1995