Call for Papers

Bird-of-a-feather Workshop at GECCO 1999

Evolution of Sensors in Nature, Hardware and Simulation

A workshop on evolution of sensors in nature, hardware and simulation is to be organized within the GECCO Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference.

In natural evolution one finds impressive examples for the principle of exploiting new sensory channels and making use of the implicit information they encode. Olfactory, tactile, auditive and visual, but also e.g. electric and even magnetic senses have emerged in a vast multitude of variants, often utilizing organs not originally "intended" for the purpose they serve at present. Motivated by these observations, the topic of sensor evolution is becoming a very modern and promising direction of research situated between biology, robotics and Artificial Life. Research in this direction strives at:
 

1. insights into how biological systems evolve strategies to access new information channels
2. new concepts for design of sensors for flexible and adaptive autonomous agents, an important issue in evolutionary robotics
3. an understanding of the relationship between the information available to an agent and the way it is processed, which is of particular interest for Artificial Life research.

These questions can be approached by studying biological systems as well as hardware or software realizations of evolvable sensors.

Submissions are solicited on any of the following topics:
 

• Sensor evolution in nature
• General concepts for hardware and simulated sensor evolution
• Hardware realizations of evolvable sensors
• Simulation experiments modeling natural sensor evolution
• Abstract sensor evolution models
• Connection between evolution of sensors and of corresponding (e.g. neural) information processing
• Feature identification as meta-sensors
• Evolution of communication capabilities

Prospective authors are requested to send their submissions (long abstract, 3-5 pages) until March 1, 1999 to

Daniel Polani  Institut fuer Informatik  Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet  D-55099 Mainz, Germany  polani@informatik.uni-mainz.de.

Electronic submissions (postscript only) are encouraged. In case of a hardcopy submission please make sure the submissions are received by the workshop organizers by March 1, 1999. In this case please submit 3 copies of your paper. Authors of accepted submissions will have the opportunity to publish their paper in workshop proceedings as long papers (10-15 pages) and to present their papers during workshop talks of approx. 15 min lengths.

For additional information send an e-mail to the workshop chairs.

Important Dates:
 

July 13, 1999

Workshop

Last updated: July 9, 1999.