[Koglist] [CEU Cogsci Talks] CogSci CEU Departmental Colloquium: Oct 1. Wednesday: Paul Schrater (University of Minnesota) - Probabilistic models of value for decisions during action

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Paul Schrater (University of Minnesota) Date: October 1, 2014 - 17:00 - 18:30 Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15 TITLE: Human-Robot Teamwork: Fluency and Embodiment in Artificial Intelligence ABSTRACT: For personal robots to play a long-term engaging role in untrained humans' lives, they need to display the kind of efficient and satisfying performance that humans are accustomed to from each other. We propose a notion of human-robot fluency, in particular as it relates to meshed action timing and motion path quality. To this end we explore computational perception and cognition architectures, as well as experimental studies of user's responses to timing of nonverbal acts. In a collaborative construction task, we find participants to prefer anticipatory action, even at the cost of errors and without increase in task efficiency. In another study we show priming through embodied perceptual simulation to have significant effects on both the efficiency of a human-robot team, and on humans' perception of the robot's intelligence, fluency, and gender. In the field of entertainment robotics, we present a robotic theater control system using insights from acting theory, which enables robotic nonverbal behavior that is both reactive and expressive. We then discuss an interactive robotic Jazz improvisation system that uses embodied gestures for musical expression, enabling simultaneous, yet responsive, joint improvisation. Finally, we present the design of a new smartphone-based media companion robot. Human-subject studies show effects on music enjoyment and social presence when the robot responds to music that participants listen to, as well as perceived partner responsiveness based on the robot's nonverbal behavior. - See more at: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events/2014-09-24/departmental-colloquium-gu… Title: Probabilistic models of value for decisions during action Abstract: While it is fair to say we choose what we value, the relative ease with which we make choices and actions masks deep uncertainties and paradoxes in our representation of value. For example, ambiguous and uncertain options are typically devalued when pitted against sure things - however, curiosity makes uncertainty valuable. In general, ecological decisions can involve goal uncertainty, uncertainty about the value of goals, and time/state-dependent values. When a soccer player moves the ball down the filed, looking for an open teammate or a chance to score a goal, the value of action plans like passing, continuing or shooting depends on conditions like teammate quality, remaining metabolic energy, defender status and proximity to goal all of which need to be integrated in real time. We show how probabilistic representations of value can solve the problem of converting and integrating heterogeneous values, like metabolic costs vs. scoring a soccer goal. By modeling values in terms of probabilities of achieving better outcomes, we decompose complex problems like the soccer player into weighted mixture of control policies, each of which produces a sequence of actions associated with more specific goal. Critically, the weights are inferences that integration all the time-varying probabilistic information about the relative quality of each policy. We use the approach to give a rational account for a set of reaching and oculomotor experiments with multiple goals. TITLE: Human-Robot Teamwork: Fluency and Embodiment in Artificial Intelligence ABSTRACT: For personal robots to play a long-term engaging role in untrained humans' lives, they need to display the kind of efficient and satisfying performance that humans are accustomed to from each other. We propose a notion of human-robot fluency, in particular as it relates to meshed action timing and motion path quality. To this end we explore computational perception and cognition architectures, as well as experimental studies of user's responses to timing of nonverbal acts. In a collaborative construction task, we find participants to prefer anticipatory action, even at the cost of errors and without increase in task efficiency. In another study we show priming through embodied perceptual simulation to have significant effects on both the efficiency of a human-robot team, and on humans' perception of the robot's intelligence, fluency, and gender. In the field of entertainment robotics, we present a robotic theater control system using insights from acting theory, which enables robotic nonverbal behavior that is both reactive and expressive. We then discuss an interactive robotic Jazz improvisation system that uses embodied gestures for musical expression, enabling simultaneous, yet responsive, joint improvisation. Finally, we present the design of a new smartphone-based media companion robot. Human-subject studies show effects on music enjoyment and social presence when the robot responds to music that participants listen to, as well as perceived partner responsiveness based on the robot's nonverbal behavior. - See more at: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events/2014-09-24/departmental-colloquium-gu… We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) ! Cognitive Science Events at CEU: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu