Dino A. Araza I.T.

Elective - Comlab 2 - 9/8/14

BSCS 4B Dr. Engr. Jose Manuel Paredes
1. Cognitive Robotics Group University of Toronto
The Cognitive Robotics group is concerned with endowing robotic or software agents with
higher level cognitive functions that involve reasoning, for example, about goals, perception,
actions, the mental states of other agents, collaborative task execution, etc. University of Toronto
Cognitive Robotics group
Cognitive robots are those robots that create cognitive activity or robots that think like human.
These robots have cognitive capabilities such as high-level perception and action, attention,
memory, learning, concept formation, reasoning and problem solving, communication and use of
language, theory of mind and social interaction. An example of cognitive robots are Asimo and Nao
because those robots can interact with its environment and have reasoning and problem solving
abilities just like when the robots fell down they can percept that they are not in proper form so
those robots will get up and stand properly.
2. The Center of Intelligent Systems Vanderbilt University
Center of Intelligent System is an organization that deals with advance state of the art
intelligent systems through the research and development of intelligent embodied agents such as
autonomous robots. Current R&D includes skill learning for humanoid robots, perception learning
for mobile robots, and memory structures for task learning for cognitive robots.
The center currently houses two laboratory for their research the Cognitive Robotics Lab and
Intelligent Robotics Lab. The Cognitive Robotics Laboratory (CRL) conducts research on humanoid
robots, service robots, multi-robot teams, and human-robot symbiosis. Research on mobile robotics
is conducted within the Intelligent Robotics Lab (IRL).
3. The Symbolic and Subsymbolic Robotic Intelligence Control System
The Symbolic and Subsymbolic Robotic Intelligence Control System (SS-RICS) was inspired by
ACT-R and other computational cognitive architectures that are attempting to merge connectionist
and symbolic AI approaches. By applying cognitive psychological principles to robotics, we believe it
is possible to produce a system that is capable of autonomous operation and high level interaction
with human operators. This system merges high level symbolic representations of objects and
activities into a production system processor driven by high-level goals and low-level parallel
processing of input sensory devices. This merge of low-level sub-symbolic processing and symbolic
goal-driven processing will allow us to meet the demanding real time autonomous processing
needed to interact with the dynamic world we live in.
As it says that they are achieving to merge the connectionist and symbolic AI approaches and to
produce autonomous operational system to have a high level interaction with its human operators.
4. SocioCognitive Robotics at Delft University of Technology
Is an institution that have a goal to introduce novel robotics technology that will enable robots
to work together with humans in human environments, contributing to all kinds of services and
labor beyond confined industrial environments. With a mission to perform interdisciplinary
research in a coordinated fashion to address all the aspects of modern robotics, including the non-
technical aspects. Areas of expertise are bio-inspired robot design, human-robot interaction,
functional decomposition, cybernetics, spatial presence, autonomous control and machine learning.
Dino A. Araza I.T. Elective - Comlab 2 - 9/8/14
BSCS 4B Dr. Engr. Jose Manuel Paredes
Robotics is predicted to be the next big step in the digital revolution having an unprecedented
impact on the way that we live. It provides an answer to some of the grand challenges of the 21st
century, such as: reliable labor, assisting or replacing humans where conditions are dangerous,
unhealthy or unethical, and finally, supporting humans in safety and observation. Additionally,
robotics is believed to offer a solution to social challenges such as the aging society. As technology
reaches a maturity level where complex robotic tasks become feasible and affordable, a more
personal breed of robots is coming and conquering a position in our lives quickly. This personal
form of robots must have a human interaction on many different levels, which is raising challenges
with respect to: safety, responsibility, controllability, and usability. The up till now mainly
technically dominated field of robotics should therefore be enriched with a range of other
disciplines that are necessary to bring robotics to the next stage of socio-technical systems.
5. Cognitive Robotics at ENSTA autonomous embodied systems, evolving in complex and
non-constraint environments, using mainly vision as sensor.
ENSTA ParisTech Robotics and Computer Vision" team, their research focuses on mobile robot
navigation, perception, embedded vision, motor learning and human-robot interaction. Their
emphasis is on applying machine learning to real-world applications, such as assistive and service
robotics, humanoid robotics, intelligent vehicles, and security.
As a result of their previous work on control architectures, they introduced the URBI scripting
interface language for robot control. This language is continually enhanced and maintained
by GOSTAI, a spin-off company of their team.
6. Intelligent System Groups University of Utrecht
The Intelligent Systems group studies intelligent systems in a fundamental as well as an
application-oriented way, with a special focus on intelligent agents and multi-agent systems. The
group is involved in several bachelor courses as well as a minor Technical Artificial
Intelligence and a Master programme Artificial Intelligence. They research focuses on four areas of
agent technology:
- Communication in multi-agent systems
- Coordination and norms in multi-agent systems
- Reasoning and argumentation in multi-agent systems
- Multi-agent learning

7. Cognitive Robotics at the Naval Research Laboratory
The Naval Research Lab approached Human-Robot Interaction was through cognitive robotics:
understanding how and why people act the way they do. More capable and intelligent robots and
autonomous systems will require more human-like cognitive abilities.
They hypothesis is that robots and autonomous systems that use human-
like representations knowledge will enable better collaboration and interaction
with the people who use them. Similar representations and reasoning
mechanisms make it easier for people to work with these autonomous systems.
An autonomous system must be able to explain its decisions in a way that
people understand, which should lead to better trust and acceptance of the
Dino A. Araza I.T. Elective - Comlab 2 - 9/8/14
BSCS 4B Dr. Engr. Jose Manuel Paredes
system. If an autonomous system can predict a person's needs, even in the
very short term, it can prepare for it and act appropriately.
8. What Does the Future Hold for Cognitive Robots? Idaho National Laboratory
Idaho National Laboratory have different theories on the things that might happen in the future
and one of them is the computational power of computers is increasing exponentially while the
human brain is fixed at around 100 trillion connections. The somewhat shocking realization is that if
someday AI can reach a level comparable to human intelligence, there is no reason why it will not
continue to sail past it. It means that we human are very powerful because it is not possible that we
can make an AI that is more efficient than us but in the other hand its worst because it can bring
chaos if it not use in good purpose.

9. Autonomous Systems Laboratory at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
ASL at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid had a partnership creating a robotic agent, built by an
international team lead by researchers at Reykjavik University in Iceland, and is pushing the
boundaries of artificial intelligence by automatically learning socio-communicative skills. Its a big
step towards the ultimate goal of creating intelligence that is both self-sufficient and adaptable in a
wide variety of environments and its a great achievement to make because it can be a powerful AI
that can help us because of its sufficiency.
10. C. Mautner and R. K. Belew (1999). Evolving robot morphology and control
Abstract
Most robotic approaches begging with a fixed robot hardware design and then experiment
with control structures. We take a different approach that considers both the robot hardware and
the control structure as variables in the evolution process. This paper reports the results of
experiments which explore the placement of sensors and effectors around the perimeter of a
simulated agent's body, and the neural network (NNet) that controls them.
This study is very useful and if it is created it help us a lot because if a robot can morph or
change its physical structure it can do more job than a static robot that is fixed with its structure
and it can help the robot itself doing different tasks.







Dino A. Araza I.T. Elective - Comlab 2 - 9/8/14
BSCS 4B Dr. Engr. Jose Manuel Paredes
The Scientist in the Crib
The book was wrote by Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff and Patricia K.
Kuhl. It is centered on understanding the way how babies discover things like a
scientist , How do they transform sound waves into individual words,
independent of the speaker, turn words into concepts, and concepts into
meaning, and how babies formulate ideas on their mind on the things that are in
its environment.
One of the focused topic of the book is about the teachers that enhance the
knowledge of the babies. The wonderful teachers that babies have are their
parents because parents are designed by millions of years of evolution to act in
ways that enable babies to learn better and faster. Another thing that babies do
to gather idea is by copying the things that adults or anything that is in his
environment. For example a six-month old baby in this time babies can
differentiate sounds. When they hear the sound of R they morph it with L just
to produce the same sound of it and by practicing and practicing they can now
speak the sound well. Babies also can learn by themselves just like the title of this
book says babies are scientist but not the same as the real scientist just a
discoverer of things that they firstly encountered and another thing with the
babies they also have built-in knowledge that came from the genes of their
mother and father they only need is to enhance these things to be more
knowledgeable.
Although babies are born to this world equipped for learning, thanks to their own
knowledge and to their parents that is willing to guide them, to nourish and
dedicated. As the title suggests, they advance a hypothesis that a baby is really
like a scientist (and a scientist like a baby), forming ideas about the world, doing
little experiments to test them, and refining or discarding ideas in light of
experimental results. Indeed, the authors believe that babies are driven by a need
to explain, to understand, and this drive manifests itself during every stage of
babys development.
MIND DESIGN
MIND DESIGN is the endeavor to understand mind (thinking, intellect) in
terms of its design (how it works). It amounts, therefore, to a kind of cognitive
psychology. But it is oriented more toward structure and mechanism than toward
correlation or law, more toward the "how" than the "what", than is traditional
empirical psychology. An "experiment" in mind design is more often an effort to
Dino A. Araza I.T. Elective - Comlab 2 - 9/8/14
BSCS 4B Dr. Engr. Jose Manuel Paredes
build something and make it work, than to observe or analyze what already exists.
Thus, the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the attempt to construct intelligent
artifacts, systems with minds of their own, lies at the heart of mind design. Of
course, natural intelligence, especially human intelligence, remains the final
object of investigation, the phenomenon eventually to be understood. What is
distinctive is not the goal but rather the means to it. Mind design is psychology by
reverse engineering. MIND DESIGN II
The book was wrote by John Haugeland was a professor of philosophy at
the University of Chicago from 1999 until his death. He is featured in Tao Ruspoli's
film Being in the World. Based on my understand Mind Design is understanding
the mechanism of the brain on how it is working and what is the functions of it.
And mind designing is similar on making an AI because you are creating or
designing and function or rule on how that thing works based on the brain or the
processor that is inputted to that machine.
Phantom in the mind
The book was wrote by Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran (born 1951)
is a neuroscientist known primarily for his work in the fields of behavioral
neurology and visual psychophysics. He is currently a Professor in the Department
of Psychology and the Graduate Program in Neurosciences at the University of
California, San Diego. Ramachandran is also Director of the Center for Brain and
Cognition affiliated with the UC San Diego Department of Psychology. The book
present an interesting look on how our brain works and the unusual beliefs of
people who had impairment to their brain, or those brains that has been
remapped due to certain things. This book gives us, not only clear descriptions of
the complex workings of the brain, but it entertains us through humor and
philosophical insights as to the meaning of self, consciousness, and the
mechanisms of belief. The book contains many illustrations of the brain and
includes several interesting visual experiments that you can perform on yourself.
The author knows get facts by asking pertinent questions. Throughout this
book, Ramachandran examines questions, sees features that sensations must
have in order to fit the model of consciousness and to point out fallacies of past
philosophers. He proposes that conscious sensations (qualia) must have at least
three features: irrevocability (or stability), choice (the ability to make decisions),
and memory. By understanding these three features, we can ask if certain actions
by other animals (such as bees finding honey) or by brain damaged people have
conscious awareness of their actions.
Dino A. Araza I.T. Elective - Comlab 2 - 9/8/14
BSCS 4B Dr. Engr. Jose Manuel Paredes