IST-FET launches a new project on 'Embodied and Communicating Agents'

FET, the Unit dealing with Future and Emerging Technologies and acting as the pathfinder of IST by exploring new sccience and technology frontiers, has launched a new project in the area of complex systems, ECAGENTS.

ECAGENTS proposes visionary and high risk research that will provide better understanding of the role of communication in collections of embodied and situated agents using the methodological and theoretical tools of complex systems science and computer science. The partners of the project aim at studying how communication arises, what different types of communication systems there are or can be, what the different pre pre-conditions are that must be satisfied for the emergence of different types of communication systems, what kind of new performances at the collective level are made possible by different communication systems, what is the role of the communication network topology in such performances.
The project will investigate basic properties of different communication systems, from simple communication systems in animals to human language and technology supported human communication, to clarify the nature of existing communication systems and to provide ideas for designing new technologies based on collections of embodied and communicating devices.
The aim of the project is the development of a new generation of embodied agents that are able to interact directly (i.e. without human intervention) with the physical world and to communicate between them and with other agents (including humans). This will be achieved through the development of new design principles, algorithms, and mechanisms that can extend the functionality of existing technological artefacts (mobile phones, Wi -Fi devices, robots and robot robot-like artefacts, etc.) and can lead to the development of new artefacts exploiting the characteristics of ECAGENTS.
Co-ordinator of the project is CNR-ISTC. The partners of this project are coming from a wide variety of disciplines including biologists, linguists, phychologists, and researchers from AI and robotics. Participants are: Humboldt-Universitaet Zu Berlin, Collegium Budapest, Universita Degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Sony France S.A The University of Tokyo, IT-Forsknngsinstituter Victoria AB, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
Some of the activities carried our during the first year of the project will be illustrated at the First European Conference on Complex Systems in Information Science and Technology,Villa Gualino, ISI Torino 5-8 December 2004.Project Information in brief:,Project Type: Integrated Project,Start Date: 2004-01-01,Duration: 48 months,Project Cost: 6.93 million euro,End Date: 2007-12-31,Project Funding: 4.30 million euro,Contact Person: Stefano Nolfi, E-mail: [e-mail],For more Info: http://ecagents.istc.cnr.it

Countries

Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Sweden