Social Cognition for Human-Robot Symbiosis—Challenges and Building Blocks

The next generation of robot companions or robot working partners will need to satisfy social requirements somehow similar to the famous laws of robotics envisaged by Isaac Asimov time ago (Asimov, 1942). The necessary technology has almost reached the required level, including sensors and actuators, but the cognitive organization is still in its infancy and is only partially supported by the current understanding of brain cognitive processes. The brain of symbiotic robots will certainly not be a “positronic” replica of the human brain: probably, the greatest part of it will be a set of interacting computational processes running in the cloud. In this article, we review the challenges that must be met in the design of a set of interacting computational processes as building blocks of a cognitive architecture that may give symbiotic capabilities to collaborative robots of the next decades: (1) an animated body-schema; (2) an imitation machinery; (3) a motor intentions machinery; (4) a set of physical interaction mechanisms; and (5) a shared memory system for incremental symbiotic development. We would like to stress that our approach is totally un-hierarchical: the five building blocks of the shared cognitive architecture are fully bi-directionally connected. For example, imitation and intentional processes require the “services” of the animated body schema which, on the other hand, can run its simulations if appropriately prompted by imitation and/or intention, with or without physical interaction. Successful experiences can leave a trace in the shared memory system and chunks of memory fragment may compete to participate to novel cooperative actions. And so on and so forth. At the heart of the system is lifelong training and learning but, different from the conventional learning paradigms in neural networks, where learning is somehow passively imposed by an external agent, in symbiotic robots there is an element of free choice of what is worth learning, driven by the interaction between the robot and the human partner. The proposed set of building blocks is certainly a rough approximation of what is needed by symbiotic robots but we believe it is a useful starting point for building a computational framework

Introducing a Pictographic Language for Envisioning a Rich Variety of Enactive Systems with Different Degrees of Complexity

Notwithstanding the considerable amount of progress that has been made in recent years, the parallel fields of cognitive science and cognitive systems lack a unifying methodology for describing, understanding, simulating and implementing advanced cognitive behaviours. Growing interest in ’enactivism’ - as pioneered by the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela - may lead to new perspectives in these areas, but a common framework for expressing many of the key concepts is still missing. This paper attempts to lay a tentative foundation in that direction by extending Maturana and Varela’s pictographic depictions of autopoietic unities to create a rich visual language for envisioning a wide range of enactive systems - natural or artificial - with different degrees of complexity. It is shown how such a diagrammatic taxonomy can help in the comprehension of important relationships between a variety of complex concepts from a pan-theoretic perspective. In conclusion, it is claimed that visual language is not only valuable for teaching and learning, but also offers important insights into the design and implementation of future advanced robotic systems

Dissonant Harmonies: Modelling and Conceptualising Improvising Social Groups

Improvisation has attracted increasing attention within organisational and managerial studies as a method to improve efficiency and innovation without adequately understanding the conditions prerequisite for improvisation’s operation. This paper examines how the jazz repertoire theory, and New Cultural studies of jazz address improvisation within jazz ensembles, showing neither adequately explaining improvisation. The paper draws on Bourdieu’s concepts, fleshed out in Wacquant’s ethnography research of habitus acquisition among pugilists to propose a model of the symbiotic ensemble providing the conditions essential for improvisation. Symbiotic ensembles are composed of synergetic musicians, all of relatively equal musical and social status, who have commonly accrued an embodied musical improvising habitus through their musical and life trajectories, from first learning an instrument, transitioning to improvisation, performing in various ensemble settings whereby they acquire influences and become vectors transmitting musical concepts among disparate musical ensembles

Ecologies of Practice in Musical Performance

This article presents an ecological model of musical performance drawn from the field of Gibsonian Ecological Psychology and the techniques of Actor-Network Theory as explicated by Bruno Latour and others. Citing a wide body of empirical research, it is argued that musicians and their musical instruments exist in an ecological relationship at the level of embodied gesture. Furthermore, it is proposed that every act of musicking amounts to a construction of a network of actors that define an “Ecology of Practice,” a thick description more fully encompassing the complexities of musicking than traditional notions of performance practice.Cet article présente un modèle écologique de l’interprétation musicale inspiré du champ de la psychologie écologique gibsonienne et des techniques de la théorie de l’acteur- réseau telle que définie par Bruno Latour et d’autres. Sur la base d’un large corpus de recherche empirique, il avance que les musiciens et leurs instruments existent dans une relation écologique au niveau du geste incarné. En outre, il propose que chaque acte consistant à jouer de la musique corresponde à la construction d’un réseau d’acteurs qui définissent une « écologie de la pratique », description dense qui englobe plus pleinement les complexités du fait de jouer de la musique que les notions de pratiques performancielles

Anchoring Knowledge in Interaction: Towards a Harmonic Subsymbolic/Symbolic Framework and Architecture of Computational Cognition

We outline a proposal for a research program leading to a new paradigm, architectural framework, and prototypical implementation, for the cognitively inspired anchoring of an agent’s learning, knowledge formation, and higher reasoning abilities in real-world interactions: Learning through interaction in real-time in a real environment triggers the incremental accumulation and repair of knowledge that leads to the formation of theories at a higher level of abstraction. The transformations at this higher level filter down and inform the learning process as part of a permanent cycle of learning through experience, higher-order deliberation, theory formation and revision. The envisioned framework will provide a precise computational theory, algorithmic descriptions, and an implementation in cyber-physical systems, addressing the lifting of action patterns from the subsymbolic to the symbolic knowledge level, effective methods for theory formation, adaptation, and evolution, the anchoring of knowledge-level objects, real-world interactions and manipulations, and the realization and evaluation of such a system in different scenarios. The expected results can provide new foundations for future agent architectures, multi-agent systems, robotics, and cognitive systems, and can facilitate a deeper understanding of the development and interaction in human-technological settings

Towards human technology symbiosis in the haptic mode

Search and rescue operations are often undertaken in dark and noisy environments in which rescue teams must rely on haptic feedback for exploration and safe exit. However, little attention has been paid specifically to haptic sensitivity in such contexts or to the possibility of enhancing communicational proficiency in the haptic mode as a life-preserving measure. Here we discuss the design of a haptic guide robot, inspired by careful study of the communication between blind person and guide dog. In the case of this partnership, the development of a symbiotic relationship between person and dog, based on mutual trust and confidence, is a prerequisite for successful task performance. We argue that a human-technology symbiosis is equally necessary and possible in the case of the robot guide. But this is dependent on the robot becoming 'transparent technology' in Andy Clark's sense. We report on initial haptic mode experiments in which a person uses a simple mobile mechanical device (a metal disk fixed with a rigid handle) to explore the immediate environment. These experiments demonstrate the extreme sensitivity and trainability of haptic communication and the speed with which users develop and refine their haptic proficiencies in using the device, permitting reliable and accurate discrimination between objects of different weights. We argue that such trials show the transformation of the mobile device into a transparent information appliance and the beginnings of the development of a symbiotic relationship between device and human user. We discuss how these initial explorations may shed light on the more general question of how a human mind, on being exposed to an unknown environment, may enter into collaboration with an external information source in order to learn about, and navigate, that environment

SPIT IN MY MOUTH: Queer Intimacies, Material Intra-actions, and Sensuous Becoming

This document describes my multidisciplinary art practice as it intersects with New Materialism, Queer and Affect theory, Ecology, and my embodied and experiential knowledge as a queer subject. The writing is divided into two categories. One is more theoretical, thinking through these different discourses. The other realizes them through relationships and intra-actions between my material kin and me. With these two modes of writing,I propose that embodied and felt knowing is as valid and illuminating as more traditional forms of knowledge. These sections are interdependent and resist linear logic, offering relational meanings to each reader as they find their way through a terrain of text and image offering a multiplicity of readings. Renaming difficulties with articulation as a legitimate tension within my own way of thinking and experiencing, this document pushes against such exactitude of ideas. Ultimately the artworks in my thesis exhibition and this outlining document work to reveal queerness, or queering, as a basic tenet for existence. This text uses Open Dyslexic, an open-source font designed for readers with dyslexia, a learning difference whose wide range of effects alters the way a person takes in, processes, and utilizes language and graphic symbols