MEDAL Blogging

According to the estimated impact factor, GECCO (Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference) ranks 11th in computer science conferences on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. The source: http://www.cs-conference-ranking.org/conferencerankings/topicsii.html.

Ben Goertzel published an interesting post Open-Source Robots + Robot Simulators + Virtual Worlds + AI = ??? on his blog The Multiverse According to Ben.

SiouxWIRE Annex published an interview with Theo Jansen on his creation, the autonomous, wind-powered machines. The machines are composed mainly of plastic tubes and lemonade bottles. A genetic algorithm was used to determine a proper combination of tube lengths to properly translate circular movement to movement of the machine “toes”. Several related videos can be [...]

The website of Computational Learning Theory (COLT) and the association for Computational Learning (ACL) has been remodeled. Check the updated web page here. Don’t miss the interview with Vladimir Vapnik, which is provided as part of the planned series of interviews with COLT leading researchers.

As I was browsing through various blogs, I noticed a (little older) post about the work of Dario Floreano et al. from EPFL on the use of evolutionary algorithms for evolving robots. Besides other things, what’s interesting about this work is that the study shows that some robots learn to lie by providing deceptive information [...]

On Intelligent Machines I read a post on Feng Gui, which simulates how humans focus their attention on a picture or a web page and creates an “attention heatmap”.
Here’s an example attention heatmap generated for MEDAL Web Page:

I just got a note from Peter Grunwald that he published a new book on the minimum description length principle. For more information and sample chapters, please visit
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~pdg/book/book.html.

A new journal called Advances in Artificial Intelligence has just been launched at Hindawi Publishing Corporation. Areas of interest include but are not limited to:

Robotics
Soft computing theory and applications
Evolutionary inspired computing
Pervasive computing and ambient intelligence
Intelligent Web
Bioinformatics
Neuroinformatics
Computing and the mind
Cognitive science
Non-classical computing and novel computing models
DNA computing and quantum computing
Natural computing
Philosophy and AI
Foundations of AI

Advances in [...]

XCSFJava 1.1 code authored by Martin V. Butz was posted online and its documentation was posted as MEDAL Report No. 2007008. Click here to access MEDAL software, or here to access MEDAL reports.

NewScientistTech posted a nice article on Robotarium X, the first robot zoo. Check out the full article here. Thanks to the Intelligent Machines Blog for the pointer.
A video and several photos of Robotarium X can be found here. Photo courtesy of Leonel Moura.