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Animals to Animats is a conference. It is held every two years, at various locations around the world, and brings together researchers from ethology, psychology, ecology, artificial intelligence, artificial life, robotics, engineering, and many other related fields, seeking to bind the disciplines together, and take animal cognition from the natural world, recreating it in alife.

The goal of the conferences is to drive understanding and ability to reproduce the behaviours and underlying mechanisms that allow natural and synthetic agents (animats) to adapt and survive in uncertain environments.

In short, starting with natural animal behaviour, transferring that to alife, in order to recreate adaptive, reasoning, and even natural intelligent behaviour of non-humans to artificially created animals and servant agents who can then adapt to changing environments without being explicitly programmed to.

These books each hold the complete set of papers successfully chosen by the conference in that year. As is usual with products of this type, where possible we link to or host the papers presented. If this has been possible, the paper name will be a link.

CONTENTS

THEORETICAL ISSUES - PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Bringing Representation Back to Life
Andy Clark and Michael Wheeler

Some Armchair Worries about Wheeled Behavior
Fred A. Keijzer

Beyond Physical Grounding and Na?ve Time: Investigations Into Short-Term Memory For Autonomous Agents
Mark Rylatt and Chris Czarnecki

Exploiting Embodiment for Category Learning
Christian Scheier and Rolf Pfeifer

Learning To Do Without Cognition
Emmet Spier and David McFarland

Learning in Psychologically Plausible Conditions: The Case of an Imaginary Pet Robot
Stephane Zrehen, Hiroaki Kitano, and Masahiro Fujita

Robots and Representations
Mark H. Bickhard

PERCEPTION AND VISUALLY GUIDED BEHAVIOR

Dynamic Categorization of Explorative Behaviors for Emergence of Stable Sensimotor Configurations
Luc Berthouze, Yukifumi Shigematsu, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi

Evolution of Visually-Guided Approach Behaviour in Recurrent Artificial Neural Network Robot Controllers
Zoltan Biro and Tom Ziemke

Simulation and Robot Implementation of Visual Orientation Behaviors of Flies
Susanne A. Huber and Heinrich H. Bulthoff

How Should a Robot Discriminate Between Objects? A Comparison between Two Methods
Edwin de Jong and Paul Vogt

Evolving Motion-Tracking Behaviour for a Panning Camera Head
Nick Jakobi

Look Before You Leap: Peering Behavior for Depth Perception
M. Anthony Lewis and Mark E. Nelson

Self-Organizing Internal Representation for Behavior Acquisition of Vision-Based Mobile Robots
Takayuki Nakamura

Visual Looming as a Range Sensor for Mobile Robots
Erol Sahin and Paolo Gaudiano

Investigation of a Sensorimotor System for Saccadic Scene Analysis: An Integrated Approach
C. Zetsche, K. Schill, H. Deubel, G. Krieger, E. Umkehrer, and S. Beinlich

ACTION SELECTION AND BEHAVIORAL SEQUENCES

Plantification Versus Sensory-Motor Conditioning: What Are the Issues?
A. Revel, P. Gaussier, S. Lepretre, and J.P. Banquet

Evolving Action Selection and Selective Attention Without Actions, Attention, or Selection
Anil K. Seth

Dynamical Systems for the Behavioral Organization of an Anthropomorphic Mobile Robot
Axel Steinhage and Thomas Bergener

An Extension of Maes' Action Selection Mechanism for Animats
Vincent Decugis and Jacques Ferber

Behaviors Coordination Using Restless Bandits Allocation Indexes
Yassine Faihe and Jean-Pierre Muller

Behavior-Based Primitives for Articulated Control
Maja J. Mataric, Matthew Williamson, John Demiris, and Aswath Mohan

Selection Behaviour in Caddis Fly Larvae
Valentin A. Nepomnyashchikh

Solving a Complex Prisoner's Dilemma With Self-Modifying Policies
Jieyu Zhao and Jurgen Schmidhuber

NAVIGATION

Modeling Ant Navigation with an Autonomous Agent
Ralf Moller, Dimitrios Lambrinos, Rolf Pfeifer, Thomas Labhart, and Rudiger Wehner

Simulated and Situated Models of Chemical Trail Following in Ants
Titus Sharpe and Barbara Webb

Reinforcement Landmark Learning
S.P. Toombs, W.A. Phillips, and L.S. Smith

Animat Navigation Using a Cognitive Graph
Olivier Trullier and Jean-Arcady Meyer

Efficient Model-Based Exploration
Marco Wiering and Jurgen Schmidhuber

Autonomous Decision Making in Local Navigation
Percy Dahm and Carsten Bruckhoff

Motivated Animat Navigation: A Visually Guided Approach
P. Gaussier, C. Joulain, J.P. Banquet

Landmark-Based Navigation for a Mobile Robot
Carl Owen and Ulrich Nehmzow

A Subsymbolic+Symbolic Model for Learning Sequential Navigation
Ron Sun and Todd Peterson

EMERGENT STRUCTURES AND BEHAVIORS

Risk Sensitive and Ambiguity Reducing Dominance Interactions in a Virtual Laboratory
Charlotte K. Hemelrijk

Structural Coupling of Cognitive Memories through Adaptive Language Games
Luc Steels

Learning to Perceive the World as Articulated: An Approach for Hierarchical Learning in Sensory-Motor Systems
Jun Tani and Stefano Nolfi

The Evolution of Subtle Maneuvers in Situated Hockey
Alan D. Blair and Elizabeth Sklar

Multifunctionality: a Fundamental Property of Behavior Mechanisms Based on Dynamical Systems
Herbert Jaeger

Species Abundance Adapted to the Energy Flow in Ecosystem Simulation
Tokufumi Yamamoto, Michael Kirley, and Xiaodong Li

Morpho-Functional Machine: Robotics Approach of Amoeba Model Based on Vibrating Potential Method
Hiroshi Yokoi, Wenwei Yu, Jun Hakura, and Yukinori Kakazu

Modeling of Emergent Ecology for Simulating Adaptive Behavior of Universal Computer Programs
Shinchiro Yoshii, Satoshi Ohashi, and Yukinori Kakazu

LEARNING

Role of Behavior in the Development of Complex Neuronal Properties
Nikolaus Almassy and Olaf Sporns

Learning Hierarchical Control Structures for Multiple Tasks and Changing Environments
Bruce L. Digney

Improving the DAC Architecture by Using Proprioceptive Sensors
Ralf Salomon

Temporal Pattern Learning in a Spiking Neuron Chain
Matt Southall, Tom Scutt, and Barbara Webb

Computational Models of Classical Conditioning: A Comparative Study
Christian Balkenius and Jan Moren

Emotion-Driven Learning for Animat Control
Sandra Clara Gadanho and John Hallam

Skill Acquisition and Self-Improvement for Environmental Change Adaptation of Mobile Robot
Takashi Minato and Minoru Asada

Dynamic Action Sequences in Reinforcement Learning
Jan Moren

Learning Concepts in Software Agents
Uma Ramamurthy, Stan Franklin, and Aregahegn Negatu

MOTOR LEARNING

MMC - a Recurrent Neural Network Which Can Be Used As Manipulable Body Model
Holk Cruse, Ulrich Steinkuhler, and Christian Burkamp

From Lampreys to Salamanders: Evolving Neural Controllers for Swimming and Walking
Auke Jan Ijspeert, John Hallam, and David Willshaw

BISAM: From Small Mammals to a Four-Legged Walking Machine
W. Ilg, K. Berns, H. Jedele, J. Albiez, R. Dillmann, M. Fischer, H. Witte, J. Biltzinger, R. Lehmann, and N. Schilling

Adaptive Behaviour of Quadruped Walking Robot under Periodic Perturbation
Satoshi Ito, Hideo Yuasa, Zhi-wei Luo, Masami Ito, and Dai Yanagihara

COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR

Market Trading Interactions as Collective Adaptive Behavior
Dave Cliff and Janet Bruten

Sewer Robotics
Joachim Hertzberg, Thomas Christaller, Frank Kirchner, Ulrich Licht, Erich Rome

Learning Distributed Strategies for Traffic Control
David E. Moriarty, Simon Handley, and Pat Langley

A Society of Agents in Environmental Monitoring
Joao Costa Seco, Carlos Pinto-Ferreira, and Luis Correia

Assessing the Role of Social Development in the Evolution of Cooperation
Ezequiel A. Di Paolo

Formation of Morphology and Morpho-Function in a Linear-Cluster Robotic System
Naoki Kawai and Fumio Hara

Collective Sorting and Segregation in Robots With Minimal Sensing
Chris Melhuish, Owen Holland, and Steve Hoddell

Tough Guys Don't Dance: Intention Movements and the Evolution of Signalling in Animal Contests
Jason Noble

Collective Learning for Spatial Collaboration
Cyril Panatier, Herve Luga, Yves Duthen

Adaptation to Multiple Robots Organization with Organizational Knowledge on Formation
Keiki Takadama, Koichiro Hajiri, Tatsuya Nomura, Shinichi Nakasuka, and Katsunori Shimohara

Robot Sheepdog Project Achieves Automatic Flock Control
Richard Vaughan, Neil Sumpter, Andy Frost, and Stephen Cameron

EVOLUTION

Emergence of Functional Modularity in Robots
Raffaele Calabretta, Stefano Nolfi, Domenico Parisi, and Gunter P. Wagner

Coevolving Communicative Behavior in a Linear Pursuer-Evader Game
Sevan G. Ficici and Jordan B. Pollack

Competitive Co-Evolutionary Robotics: From Theory to Practice
Dario Floreano, Stefano Nolfi, and Francesco Mondada

Animal-Animat Coevolution: Using the Animal Population as Fitness Function
Pablo Funes, Elizabeth Sklar, Hugues Juille, and Jordan Pollack

Perpetuating Evolutionary Emergence
A.D. Channon and R.I. Damper

Evolutionary Design of Morphology and Intelligence in Robotic System Using Genetic Programming
Kohki Kikuchi and Fumio Hara

Mate Choice and NK-Landscapes
Patricio Lerena and Michele Courant

Component-Based Adaptive Architecture with Classifier Systems
Sotaro Shimada and Yuichiro Anzai

Evolution of Protean Behavior in Pursuit-Evasion Contests
Mattias Wahde and Mats G. Nordahl

 

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