IST-FET launches Integrated Project 'COGNIRON-The Cognitive Robot Companion'
COGNIRON aims to develop methods and technologies for the construction of cognitive robots that will be able to evolve and grow their capacities in close interaction with humans.,The overall objective of this project is to study the perceptual, representational, reasoning and learning capabilities of embodied robots in human centered environments. More particularly, the main focus of COGNIRON will be the development of a robot whose ultimate task is to serve humans as a companion in their daily life. The robot is not only considered as a ready-made device but as an artificial creature, which improves its capabilities in a continuous process of acquiring new knowledge and skills.The design of the cognitive functions of this artificial creature and the study and development of the continuous learning, training and education process in the course of which it will mature to a true companion, are the central research themes of the project. Besides the necessary functions for sensing, moving and acting, such a robot will exhibit the cognitive capacities enabling it to focus its attention, to understand the spatial and dynamic structure of its environment and to interact with it, to exhibit a social behaviour and communicate with other agents and with humans at the appropriate level of abstraction according to context Expected results of COGNIRON are basic methods, algorithms and architectures and their integration and long-term experimentation and scientific evaluation on embodied robotic systems in different settings and situations. The results will be essential for a new generation service robots industry in Europe. COGNIRON is coordinated by the Laboratoire dAnalyse et dArchitecture des Systemes(LAAS-CNRS), in France. Work in COGNIRON is mainly carried out by Research Institutions. COGNIRON partners are coming from a wide variety of interests providing a broad understanding of the relevant issues and their solutions. Project participants are: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)-Switzerland, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA)-Germany, the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)-Sweden, the University of Amsterdam (UVA)-The Netherlands, the University of Bielefeld (UniBi)-Germany, the University of Hertfordshire (UH)-United Kingdom, the University of Karlsruhe (UniKarl)-Germany, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)-Belgium, and the Gesellschaft fur Produktionssysteme Stuttgart GmbH (GPS)-Germany. Forthcoming Events:, 5th - 7th July, Lisbon, Portugal: 5th IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles ,26th August, Toulouse, France: 18th IPFIP World Computing Congress (WCC 2004)-Topical Day Social Robots: Challenges for Intelligent Machines.,20th-22nd September, Okayama, Japan: IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interaction.,For more complete information visit: http://www.cogniron.org,Project Information in brief:,Contract: FP6-IST-002020,Project Type: Integrated Project,Duration: 48 months,Project Cost: 8.03 million euro,Project EC Funding: 6.11 million euro (plus funding support from the Swiss government) ,For more information: http://www.cogniron.org/,Contact Person: Raja Chatila, E-mail: raja.chatila@laAs.fr
Countries
Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom