ICDL is a multidisciplinary conference pertaining to all subjects related to the development and learning processes of natural and artificial systems, including perceptual, cognitive, behavioral, emotional and all other mental capabilities that are exhibited by humans, higher animals, and robots. Its visionary goal is to understand autonomous development in humans and higher animals in biological, functional, and computational terms, and to enable such development in artificial systems. ICDL strives to bring together researchers in neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence, robotics and other related areas to encourage understanding and cross-fertilization of latest ideas. Topics of interest include, but not limited to:

(1) Biological and biologically inspired architectures and general principles of development
(2) Neuronal, cortical and pathway plasticity
(3) Autonomous generation of internal representation, including feature identification
(4) Neural networks for development and learning
(5) Dynamics in neural systems and neurodynamical modeling
(6) Attention mechanisms and the development of attention skills
(7) Visual, auditory, touch systems and their development
(8) Motor systems and their development
(9) Language acquisition & understanding through development
(10) Multimodal integration through development
(11) Conceptual learning through development
(12) Motivation, value, reinforcement, and novelty
(13) Emotions and their development
(14) Learning and training techniques for assisting development
(15) Biological and biologically inspired thinking models and development of reasoning skills
(16) Models of developmental disorders
(17) Development of social skills
(18) Philosophical and social issues of development
(19) Robots with development and learning skills
(20) Using robots to study development and learning

Best Paper Awards will be offered. In addition, 4 students will each receive $250 Travel Awards to support their travel to the conference.

For details on paper submission, please see the Submission page.
Call for Tutorial Proposals

A number of ICDL 2009 tutorials are planed for June 4, 2009 at Fudan University. A proposal should include: the title, 200-250 words of description of subject material suited for ICDL 2009 web, a list of subjects to be covered, intended audience, required background of audience, number of hours (3 hours recommended) and the CV of the presenter(s) which includes information about experience of teaching or tutorials. Send the proposal via email to Zhengyou Zhang and Jochen Triesch by the deadline for tutorials. We expect to cover the cost of tutorial presentation and a small honorarium excluding the travel cost. Only registered participants are entitled to attend the tutorials but tutorials will be free of charge to all ICDL 2009 participants.
Call for Special Sessions

Special sessions have been highlights of past ICDLs. The subject of a special session should focus on an important subject of the field, and should not be too general. The special session number with their title will be listed as one of the subjects for open paper submission. However, the organizer of the special session is responsible to identify at least 5 presentations of high quality. Special sessions without sufficient submissions will be canceled and the accepted papers will be assigned to regular sessions. A presenter in a special session can choose to submit a full paper to be included in the ICDL 2009 proceedings and the IEEE Xplore but in this case he must submit the full paper to the special session which will undergo the same process of reviews as regular papers, coordinated jointly by the program chairs and the special session chair. Optionally, a presenter of a special sessions can submit a title and an abstract without submitting a full paper. A proposal for a special session should be formatted and should include the name of the organizer(s), the title of the proposed session, 200-250 words of motivation and importance suited for ICDL 2009 web, a list of confirmed presenters and tentative titles, and the CV of the organizer(s). Send the proposal via email to Zhengyou Zhang and Jochen Triesch by the deadline for special sessions.

Important Dates

* Sunday, January 25, 2009: Special session proposals and tutorial proposals due
* Sunday, February 8, 2009: Full papers due
* Friday, March 20, 2009: Reviews open to the authors for rebuttal
* Friday, March 27, 2009: Authors’ optional rebuttal to review comments due
* Sunday, April 19, 2009: Accept/Reject notification due for full papers
* Sunday, April 26, 2009: One-Page Poster abstracts due
* Sunday, May 3, 2009: Accept/Reject notification due for poster abstracts
* Sunday, May 10, 2009: Final camera-ready papers due