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From: almassy@ifi.unizh.ch (Nikolaus Almassy)
Subject: ASI-AA-95: Practice and Future of Autonomous Agents
Date: 24 May 1994 17:11:52 -0500
First announcement:
Practice and Future of Autonomous Agents:
ASI-AA-95
23 September - 1st October 1995
Centro Stefano Franscini
Monte Verita, Ticino, Switzerland
(Follow-up meeting of the NATO Advanced Study Institute "The Biology and
Technology of Intelligent Autonomous Agents", which took place Spring 1993
in Trento, Italy).
In Spring 1993 a NATO Advanced Study Institute was organized in Trento,
Italy. At the time know-how in building autonomous agents and pertinent
hardware were not widely available. This situation has changed
significantly since. There are currently many groups involved in active
research in the field working on autonomous agents theoretically and with
actual robot hardware. In the Trento meeting the focus was on spreading
expertise in actual robot building and programming. In the meantime the
field has progressed significantly. In this process a number of important
issues have emerged. They will form the focus of the 1995 meeting:
(a) Design: How can autonomous agents be designed which show
sophisticated kinds of behavior?
(b) Theory: What are the recent developments in the theory of
autonomous agents?
(c) Performance measures: How can the performance of the agents
be quantified?
Among others, the theory of dynamical systems, evolutionary approaches,
and functional analysis will be discussed with respect to the previous
issues. In addition to the state-of-the-art (the "practice"), the idea is
to generate visions for the field (the "future"). Leading researchers
representing the various theoretical orientations will present their
results and lead respective working groups.
Organization
1. Lectures/discussions
2. Working groups/workshops (including project presentations and
demonstrations by participants)
3. In-depth background lectures (philosophy, cognitive science,
evolution)
Target Audience
Advanced graduate students and post-docs/young faculty. Participants will
be expected to contribute actively to the study institute and will be
asked to submit a pertinent proposal with their applications. A maximum
number of 45 participants can be accepted.
Venue
Monte Verita is a conference center (including hotel) near Ascona, a
beautiful sunny town in Ticino, in the southern part of Switzerland. It
is owned by the Swiss government and run by the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology. It is easily reachable either by train from the international
airports of Zurich and Milan.
Director
Rolf Pfeifer, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Program Committee
- Rodney Brooks, MIT, Cambridge, Mass., USA
- Jean-Daniel Nicoud, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
- Tim Smithers, University of the Basque Country, San Sebastian, Spain
- Luc Steels, Free University of Brussels, Belgium
- Takashi Gomi, Applied AI Systems, Ottawa, Canada
(Luc Steels was the organizer of the previous NATO ASI in Trento).
Local organization
Autonomous Agents Research Group, AI Lab, Department of Computer Science,
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Footnote
Since Switzerland is not a NATO member it is not possible to get funding
for a meeting in Switzerland. Funding is available through the Swiss
government which enables us to work on the basis of low rates.
Further information
Please contact: Rolf Pfeifer
AI Lab, Computer Science Department
University of Zurich, Switzerland
E-mail: pfeifer@ifi.unizh.ch
Fax: +41-1-363 00 35
Phone: +41-1-257 43 20/31
Updates of this announcement
can be retrieved by
ftp://claude.ifi.unizh.ch/pub/monteverita/ASI-AA-95.txt or by sending an
empty E-mail to with "monte verita" in the subject
line. It can also be accessed by World Wide Web the the URL:
http://josef.ifi.unizh.ch/asi-aa.html
--
Nikolaus Almassy
Department of Computer Science almassy@ifi.unizh.ch
University of Zurich Tel: +41 - 1 - 257 43 25
8057 Zurich, Switzerland Fax: +41 - 1 - 363 00 35