Dear Colleagues,

We are preparing a special issue in IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and
Developmental Systems on "Continual Unsupervised Sensorimotor
Learning", and would like to invite you to contribute a research article
or a review for the SI. The deadline is set as February 28th, 2019. The
scope, aim, submission and other details are given below.

URL:
https://projects.au.dk/socialrobotics/news-events/show/artikel/special-issue-on-continual-unsupervised-sensorimotor-learning/

AIM AND SCOPE

Although machine learning algorithms continue to improve at a rapid pace
enabling technologies and products such as autonomous driving cars and
sophisticated image and speech recognition, it is often forgotten that
these applications represent tailored solutions to specific tasks. Thus
it is not clear if or how these autonomous systems can pave the road to
general purpose machines envisioned by many.

The pursuit for higher levels of autonomy and versatility in robotics is
arguably lead by two main factors. Firstly, as we push robots out of the
labs and productions lines, it becomes increasingly difficult to design
for all possible scenarios that a particular robot might encounter.
Secondly, the cost of designing, manufacturing, and maintaining such
systems becomes prohibitive.

As the algorithms for learning single tasks in restricted environments
are improving, new challenges have gained relevance in order to get more
autonomous artificial systems. These challenges include multi-task
learning, multimodal sensorimotor learning and lifelong adaptation to
injury, growth and ageing. Addressing these challenges promise higher
levels of autonomy and versatility of future robots.

This special issue on Continual Unsupervised Sensorimotor Learning is
primarily concerned with the developmental processes involved in
unsupervised sensorimotor learning in a life-long perspective, and in
particular the emergence of representations of action and perception in
humans and artificial agents in continual learning. These processes
include action-perception cycle, active perception, continual
sensory-motor learning, environmental-driven scaffolding, and intrinsic
motivation.

The special issue will highlight behavioural and neural data, and
cognitive and developmental approaches to research in the areas of
robotics, computer science, psychology, neuroscience, etc. Contributions
might focus on mathematical and computational models to improve robot
performance and/or attempt to unveil the underlying mechanisms that lead
to continual adaptation to changing environment or embodiment and
continual learning in open-ended environments.

Contributions from multiple disciplines including cognitive systems,
cognitive robotics, developmental and epigenetic robotics, autonomous
and evolutionary robotics, social structures, multi-agent and artificial
life systems, computational neuroscience, and developmental psychology,
on theoretical, computational, application-oriented, and experimental
studies as well as reviews in these areas are welcome.


THEMES

This special issue aims to report state-of-the-art approaches and recent
advances on Continual Unsupervised Sensorimotor Learning with a
cross-disciplinary perspective. Topics relevant to this special issue
include but are not limited to:

Emergence of representations via continual interaction
Continual sensory-motor learning
Action-perception cycle
Active perception
Environmental-driven scaffolding
Intrinsic motivation
Neural substrates, neural circuits and neural plasticity
Human and animal behaviour experiments and models
Reinforcement learning and deep reinforcement learning for life-long
learning
Multisensory robot learning
Multimodal sensorimotor learning
Affordance learning
Prediction learning


SUBMISSION

Manuscripts should be prepared according to the “Information for
Authors” of the journal found at
https://cis.ieee.org/publications/t-cognitive-and-developmental-systems/tcds-information-for-authors.
Submissions must be done through the IEEE TCDS Manuscript center:
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tcds-ieee. Please select the category
“SI: Continual Unsupervised Sensorimotor Learning”.


IMPORTANT DATES

21th March 2019 – Paper submission deadline (extended)
1st May 2019 – Notification for authors
16th June 2019 – Deadline revised papers submission
16th July 2019 – Final notification for authors
18th August 2019 – Deadline for camera-ready versions
September 2019 – Expected publication date

https://projects.au.dk/socialrobotics/news-events/show/artikel/special-issue-on-continual-unsupervised-sensorimotor-learning/


Best regards from the guest editors,
Nicolás Navarro-Gerrero, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, nng@eng.au.dk
Sao Mai Nguyen, IMT Atlantique, France, nguyensmai@gmail.com
Erhan Oztop, Ozyeğin University, Turkey, erhan.oztop@ozyegin.edu.tr
Junpei Zhong, AIST, Japan, joni.zhong@aist.go.jp