tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43627263958969022862024-02-19T03:34:57.009+00:00Artificial Culture Project BlogThe Emergence of Artificial Culture in Robot SocietiesAlan Winfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08263812573346115168noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-64534341655859667482011-03-11T17:05:00.002+00:002011-03-11T17:11:27.354+00:00Creative Commons Licence<div>To enable other people to take up the ideas on our project blog in their own work, and yet attribute their source, we can place a Creative Commons Attribution Licence on this blog. Further information about this licence can be found at:</div>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/<div>This seems to be in keeping with our aim for open science and our desire for engagement with other people, both scientists and non-scientists, about our research.</div>Frances Griffithshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02291897618954413098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-4957580176777894452011-03-04T16:30:00.001+00:002011-03-12T11:05:54.587+00:00Making sense of robots: the hermeneutic challengeOne of the challenges of the artificial culture project that we knew we would face from the start is that of making sense of the free running experiments in the lab. One of the project investigators - philosopher Robin Durie - called this the <i>hermeneutic challenge</i>. In the project proposal Robin wrote:<br />
<blockquote>what means will we be able to develop by which we can identify/recognise meaningful/cultural behaviour [in the robots]; and, then, what means might we go on to develop for interpreting or understanding this behaviour and/or its significance? </blockquote>Now, more than 3 years on, we come face to face with that question. Let me clarify: we are not - or at least not yet - claiming to have identified or recognised emerging robot culture. We do, however, more modestly claim to have demonstrated new behavioural patterns (memes) that emerge and - for awhile at least - are dominant. It's an <a href="http://artcultprojectblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/open-ended-memetic-evolution-or-is-it.html">open-ended evolutionary process</a> in which the dominant 'species' of memes come and go. Maybe these clusters of closely related memes could be labelled behavioural traditions?<br />
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Leaving that speculation aside, a more pressing problem in recent months has been to try and understand how and why certain behavioural patterns emerge at all. Let me explain. We typically seed each robot with a behavioural pattern; it is literally a sequence of movements. Think of it as a dance. But we choose these initial dances arbitrarily - movements that describe a square or triangle for instance - without any regard whatsoever for whether these movement sequences are easy or hard for the robots to imitate.<br />
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Not surprisingly then, the initial dances quickly mutate to different patterns, sometimes more complex and sometimes less. But what is it about the robot's physical shape, its sensorium, and the process of estimation inherent in imitation that gives rise to these mutations? Let me explain why this is important. Our robots and you, dear reader, have one thing in common: you both have bodies. And bodies bring limitations: firstly because you body doesn't allow you to make any movement imaginable - only ones that your shape, structure and muscles allow, and secondly because if you try to watch and imitate someone else's movements you have to guess some of what they're doing (because you don't have a perfect 360 degree view of them). That's why your imitated copy of someone else's behaviour is always a bit different. Exactly the same limitations give rise to variation in imitated behaviours in the robots.<br />
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Now it may seem a relatively trivial matter to watch the robots imitate each other and then figure out how the mutations in successive copies (and copies of copies) are determined by the robots' shape, sensors and programming. But it's not, and we find ourselves having to devise new ways of visualising the experimental data in order to make sense of what's going on. The picture below is one such visualisation*; it's actually a family tree of memes, with parent memes at the top and child memes (i.e. copies) shown branching below parents.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd62D3v8PH-Q0P3KbNG1YiNPWxf6-xILHXtk3uYKP87tj9LSEpUgDhxBwtzhSxpzEl6cDNRPsSB99Npmd-rBOcGp8IOQyFss1e8Enh4QzpOT_rS0N4QZknvKyjcew0548izUUxrT4wEIC1/s1600/meme_tree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd62D3v8PH-Q0P3KbNG1YiNPWxf6-xILHXtk3uYKP87tj9LSEpUgDhxBwtzhSxpzEl6cDNRPsSB99Npmd-rBOcGp8IOQyFss1e8Enh4QzpOT_rS0N4QZknvKyjcew0548izUUxrT4wEIC1/s400/meme_tree.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Unlike a human family tree each child meme has only one parent. In this 'memeogram' there are two memes at the start, numbered 1 and 2. 1 is a triangle movement pattern, and 2 is a square movement pattern. In this experiment there are 4 robots, and it's easy to see here that the triangle meme dominates - it and its descendants are seen much more often.<br />
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The diagram also shows which child-memes are high quality copies of their parents - these are shown in brown with bold arrows connecting them to their parent-memes. This allows us to easily see clusters of similar memes, for instance in the bottom-left there are 7 closely related and very similar memes (numbered 36, 37, 46, 49, 50, 51 and 55). Does this cluster represent a dominant 'species' of memes?<br />
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<hr />*created by Mehmet Erbas, and posted here with his permission.Alan Winfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08263812573346115168noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-67256803608426091042011-03-04T12:18:00.002+00:002011-03-04T12:42:43.435+00:00"Culture" in the Artificial Culture ProjectCan the Artificial Culture Project "teach" anything about culture to those working in "cultural studies"?<br /><br />This seems to me to raise a series of questions about the basic role of the concept of "culture" in our project.<br /><br />The first of these is the extent to which "culture" is functioning as an "empty signifier" in the project at the moment; & whether, in fact, the ultimate issue for our research is not culture <span style="font-style: italic;">per se</span>, but rather the process by means of which embodied variations are transmitted through a "community" of embodied agents.<br /><br />Whilst this question is of some interest to cultural theorists, I don't think it would represent a central area of concern for research in this field. So what sorts of questions, & what sorts of research issues, might cultural theorists who came to our project find interesting?<br /><br />My hunch is that many cultural theorists would be most interested in three aspects of our work:<br /> (1) the actual activities of the robots themselves, & the meme/gene co-evolution element of our work<br />(2) the way that the concept of "memes" has functioned in our research (this being a <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> contested notion in cultural theory)<br />(3) the evolution of our behaviour as researchers, relative to, & based on our interactions with, the robots.<br /><br />This third aspect would sit within the ethnographic dimension of our work. It's the kind of thing that someone like Bruno Latour, as a representative of the area of cultural theory known as Science & Technology Studies, would be interested in. And, I think, it's a fine example of what Andy Pickering, in his work in STS, calls the "mangle of practice".<br /><br />I think it would be interesting to parallel the reflection on "machinic" <span style="font-style: italic;">creativity</span> within the robot society; creativity within within the hermeneutic dimension of the project (creativity in interpreting the results); & the creativity of the "culture" of the Artificial Culture research project, or research team.<br /><br />One further way in which this last might be of interest is as a case study in creative, trans-disciplinary, research working.robinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556316271764505417noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-1388755701584120902011-03-04T07:36:00.002+00:002011-03-04T12:17:46.131+00:00Medicine in Society: a complex mixI was honoured to give my inaugral lecture as Professor of Medicine in Society on January 18th 2011 at Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick. The lecture considers the artificial culture project (towards the end) and is available to read at: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/fegriffiths/<div><br /></div>Frances Griffithshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02291897618954413098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-4186124891099756992011-02-28T12:59:00.004+00:002011-03-01T11:02:59.194+00:00The nature of the social agentA classic paper by Kathleen Carley and Allen Newell classifies different types of social agent, as a useful starting point for social simulation. Based on their classification our robots seem to be cognitive agents in real time interaction. The interaction at present is imitation. Through this imitation the robots might evolve in terms of their individual behaviours (as agents) as the context evolves (context includes the other agents - other robots - and the physical environment). Carley's classification suggests that as the robots evolve and become emptional cognitive agents, the processing capabilities of the robots can become less. If interaction leads to the development of social structure, social goals and then culture, the environment is becoming increasinly enriched.<br />I found this a helpful way of thinking about the robots.<br />Paper details: Carley K and Allen N. The nature of the social agent. Journal of Mathematical Sociology. 1994. 19 (4) 221-262.Frances Griffithshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02291897618954413098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-15906646139827558512011-02-26T22:01:00.004+00:002011-03-04T11:25:12.460+00:00Medicine in Society: a complex mixI had the honour of giving my inaugral lecture as Professor of Medicine in Society on January 18th 2011 at Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick. During the lecture I reflected on how the artificial culture project differs from the research I do most of the time on health and health care. Much of my research is enmeshed with its locality and time, whatever the extent of the locality and however long the time. The artificial culture project attempts to step outside the constraints of time and locality in building a robot society. Full text to follow.Frances Griffithshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02291897618954413098noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-67200076623720252522011-02-01T16:39:00.004+00:002011-02-02T09:14:27.754+00:00Robot Imitation: What do children think?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> <w:dontvertaligncellwithsp/> 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mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >One of our main research problems was whether we as humans can identify emergent patterns of behaviour within a swarm of robots.<span style=""> </span>In order to assist in this interpretation, I demonstrated a video of e-puck imitation <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hygWbKcAaTs">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hygWbKcAaTs</a> (speeded up) and asked a group of ten children (aged 7-8) what they thought was happening in the picture.<span style=""> </span>I specifically did not ask whether they can ‘spot any patterns’ as I felt that this was a leading question.<span style=""> </span><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >The majority response was that <span style="font-style: italic;">‘the robots are making triangles’</span>. <span style=""> </span>Only one child stated that <span style="font-style: italic;">‘they are copying each other’</span>. I then showed the children the player stage video without tracks and subsequently with tracks.<span style=""> </span>Whilst they were watching the player stage with tracks, one child remarked: <span style="font-style: italic;">‘</span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">I think the robot people made the robots to make shapes but these robots can’t do it very properly so maybe the robot is broken.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;">I think you need to take the robots back for the robot scientists to fix them’</span>. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >Even though the children were engaged in watching the video which indicates that they were not bored, their responses did not imply that any patterns were recognised.<span style=""> </span>What does mean for our research?<span style=""> </span>Are children not the best candidates for pattern spotting? Or maybe there are no patterns for children to spot. </span></p>Sajidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07001281808415620933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-75937490072716969602010-12-12T08:38:00.001+00:002010-12-12T08:40:43.393+00:00Interdisciplinary research, data ownership and open science<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The artificial culture project team is starting to place data on its website and make it publically available – well some of it – the data from robot experiments. The data so far uploaded is text so file size is relatively small.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For developing the open science aspect of the project, along with Sajida Bhamjee, I am working out how to make available video of the robot experiments. This has raised technical issues that prompt me to reflect about data ownership.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To maintain the project data availability over many years, perhaps well after the current research team have moved on, we have chosen to use freely available web space from one of the major commercial suppliers, so have to work within the limitations of this. We could buy more space but we do not have a funding stream to support this into the future. We can set up web space in the name of the whole team with one quota of space, or each team member can set up personal spaces and thus gain access to a larger quota of space. In a team space with equity of access, everyone can change everything. In individual spaces the person running the space specifies what is shared with other individuals or open to the public, and specifies who can change items in that space. Using individual space for the project means as individuals, we are using space we might have used for other things.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When uploading onto You Tube, the film of the social scientists meeting the robots, filmed summer 2010, it was the first time I had done this and so I just followed the instructions and opened an individual account. When I then went to upload onto You Tube a video of robots imitating, it occurred to me that, apart from the intellectual contribution through project team meetings, all the work to produce the film had been by other team members. I felt uncomfortable about uploading it under my name. We went ahead as we were exploring technical aspects of sharing videos. Realising You Tube was not the best place for the video (as it was difficult for people to download it and this was important as the video needed to be on fast forward to be watchable) we turned to using google docs. However, we face the same problem: into who’s web space do we place the video?</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When sharing data within a team where members undertake similar research – for me this is research using social science methods such as interviews – data is shared by the team even when only one or two team members actually collected the data. The rest of the team undertakes tasks to enable the data collection including gaining the funding, enabling access for recruitment of people to the study and supervising the data collection, and brings analysis expertise to the data. For projects where I didn’t collect the data, I know that given sufficient time (by which I mean time out from other tasks), I could collect the data myself - I have the skills to do this.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One of my uncomfortable feelings about uploading the video of the robots onto my You Tube website, was that I could not collect the data myself. It is just possible that given sufficient time to retrain as a roboticist I just might – but this would be a whole career not time out from teaching and administration. I can contribute to analysis of the data, but not in a way that would be sufficiently robust for critical review. It would be easy for me to interpret something about the robots that I thought was interesting. However a swarm roboticist might realise that this was a technological hitch interfering with our experiment rather than a result of the experiment.</span></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Frances Griffithshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02291897618954413098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-10314717749867210302010-12-08T21:00:00.002+00:002010-12-08T21:01:36.812+00:00Investigating social networks<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(49, 69, 99); line-height: 16px; "><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">How do we operationalise the notion of social networks for the robots in the artificial culture project?</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">In the social world embedded in the biological and physical world, interaction occurs between individual people (agents), between organisations or groups of people acting almost as if a single agents, and between individual people and organisations/groups. I am deliberatly being vague about what consitutes an organisation or group – it could be a clique of friends or a nation of people – there are questions about the location of boundaries between organisations or groups that I am not tackling here, nor the issue that individual people make up the organisations and groups.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Messages (information, ideas, stories, advice etc) move between agents – individuals as agents and organisations/groups as agents. The locations and modes of interaction are very varied and include broadcast media, face to face interaction, interaction via the internet. There are different constraints and different potentials for what is exchanged, between whom and the timing of any exchanges – synchronous or asynchronous and by how much.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">The messages and the agents are often to some extent distinct. It could be argued that there will be emergence from message interaction, which might be culture or norms, and emergence from agent interaction, what might be considered as social structures, and from the interaction of messages and agents. Agents change messages and messages change agents. Agents and messages also influence the mode of interaction. Society is complex and trying to unpack it is difficult. With the robots, we are starting with individual robots and attempting to enable the development of a simple version of this.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">In the artificial culture we might consider the robots as the agents. Currently they are programmed to look for a signal from another robot, watch the robot’s dance (pattern of movement) then, after signaling, imitate what the robot observed. Meanwhile other robots are looking for a signal and then observing to then signal and imitate. The message that is transmitted from one robot to another is the dance. So we have an interaction – that of observation and imitation of each other.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">One link in a human social network is usually defined qualitatively in terms such as friends or best friends or more quantitatively in terms of amount of social interaction such as talking to someone, with a measure of frequency the interaction. Many of the studies on social networks, at least those related to health (my area of interest), are cross sectional studies and so not concerned with formation of social networks. Those that are longitudinal still start from an existing social network. So, do we programme a social network into the robot swarm or do we programme a behaviour that might lead to the development of a social network?</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">We could design a social network consisting of robots with a propensity to more quickly notice the signaling of the robots they are linked to, compared to robots to which they are not linked. I think this could be achieved through radio signals.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">An alternative is to programme each robot to notice which robots do a dance that is most similar to their last dance (within a certain duration) and to then notice this signaling of this robot more quickly than other robots.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Doubtless this needs more refinement.</p></span>Frances Griffithshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02291897618954413098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-20972283362396858032010-12-02T21:14:00.005+00:002010-12-02T21:38:50.715+00:00Tracks, roads, footpaths and social networkingAs we develop our swarm of interacting robots, should we take consider introducing structures within our arena that are analogous to those at the micro-biological level inside cells? Packets of molecules move around cells along tracks or microtubules carried by molecular motors. See http://mechanochemistry.org/movies/ (the movie called Golgi H264-33 shows the tracks or microvilli with the packets of molecules moving along them). These tracks are influenced by what is carried along them and refashion themselves accordingly.<div><br /></div><div>We can draw analogy with people - tracks, roads and footpaths that people move along, and perhaps with social networking where it is messages that move along. </div><div><br /></div><div>The tracks take the molecule, the person or the message to the place where and interaction occurs - with another molecule, another person or the message is received by a person. At present, our robots can move in any direction within their arena. Should we consider having some tracks and meeting places?</div><div></div>Frances Griffithshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02291897618954413098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-47473834018094602782010-12-01T16:29:00.001+00:002010-12-01T18:41:17.604+00:00Robot imitation experiments with children<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> 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mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">I have spent much of the last few weeks pondering about the different ways in which I can show children the e-pucks imitating each other.<span style=""> </span>I propose one of three different methods:</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="text-indent: -18pt;"><span style=""><span style="">(1)<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>Show the imitation video, ask the children what they think is happening and then show them the player stage animation film stating ‘this is what ‘actually’ happened’.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-indent: -18pt;"><span style=""><span style="">(2)<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>Show the imitation video and the player stage animation film side by side.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="text-indent: -18pt;"><span style=""><span style="">(3)<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>Show the imitation video alone.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">However, I have concerns with all three methods.<span style=""> </span>With the imitation videos alone, it is very hard to see the patterns (even when I know what I’m looking for!) From past experience, I have learnt that children will most likely give a response to a question regardless of whether they know the answer or not. Therefore will they just provide a response to please me? Conversely, if I show the children the player stage animation films, will I be ‘spoon feeding’ them with responses?<span style=""></span> Will I be making the patterns too apparent?. In addition, by demonstrating the imitation video next to the player stage animation film the children’s attention may be divided.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Another problem with robot videos is that it may not be as engaging as having embodied robots in front of the children.<span style=""> </span>I suppose one might ask ‘Why don’t you take the robots to the children?’ Unfortunately, it is not a simple process of switching the robots ‘on’ and ‘off’.<span style=""> </span>There are various tracking and logging pieces equipment that is only available at the robot lab.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">After having a lengthy conversation with Andy (a fellow team member), he suggested that it may be possible for the robots to leave a ‘trail’ as they did the imitation.<span style=""> </span>The benefit of that method instead of method number 2 (showing player stage animation film and imitation videos simultaneously) is that the children’s attention is less likely to be divided.<span style=""> </span>This still however leaves the question of ‘am I making the patterns too obvious?’ <span style=""> </span>The highlighted drawings (player stage animation) will clearly show that the robots are producing shapes. However, it is questionable as to whether children will associate this with imitation.<span style=""> </span></p> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> <w:dontvertaligncellwithsp/> <w:dontbreakconstrainedforcedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> <w:word11kerningpairs/> <w:cachedcolbalance/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> <m:mathpr> 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<w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="31" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="32" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="33" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Book Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="37" name="Bibliography"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} </style> <![endif]-->Sajidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07001281808415620933noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-70193777481633282062010-11-28T21:28:00.008+00:002010-12-03T17:51:45.520+00:00Robot interaction seen through the eyes of children<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Our project hopes to discern new patterns of behaviour emerging from robot interaction. A concern is that the robot team will be unable to discern new patterns – ‘unable to see the wood for the trees’. Might it be that children are able to see patterns that as the research team we would miss? One of our team members, Sajida Bhamjee, has taken e-pucks into schools and collected data on the children’s reactions to seeming them moving around. The e-pucks were programmed to follow each other by sensing each other’s tail light and following it. Due to variations in the environment, such as light levels, there was some variation in what they actually did. The e-pucks moved quickly and bumped each other. The children talked in interesting ways about what was happening and who was controlling it.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;font-size:small;">Our next step is to show children the robots imitating each other. It is difficult to set this up outside the robotics lab (not impossible but time consuming and technically challenging), so instead of taking the robots to the children we have filmed the robots. However, when they imitate they move slowly as you can see if you follow this link to the film on You Tube:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hygWbKcAaTs">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hygWbKcAaTs</a></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hygWbKcAaTs"></a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;font-size:small;">This might not interest children. Would it catch their attention if speeded up? The video is available for <a href="https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B9awXWRFVNvTZGJlZGY5ODgtNWY0Mi00NmNkLWJmZGUtYjFmN2NhZjYxNzYx&hl=en">down load</a>. Please try viewing the film speeded up.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;font-size:small;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;font-size:small;">From the data collected through the tracking equipment in the robot lab, and using ‘Player Stage’ software, the robots as seen in the film can appear as an animation with their tracks as if ‘drawn in the sand’. You can <a href="https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B9awXWRFVNvTM2Y3NjA4YjgtOWZkNy00ZTAxLWEwZWMtMGQ0NzFiYWY2ZmJk&hl=en">download </a>a video of this. Below is the tracks they drew.</span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxxHkDuI9aj7Mlfxq4dbOE-QNYGn3PbyIIae4VmgiOI7_luwQJSSMivMujznpjNfev5y7i9E7uWLvb_LoVDd4m55jqujm36qU4bwe266lF98OoxAeAObZAaeJ-gKraUX7Gx7T8Qm9FN3o/s1600/stage-12_labelled.png"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 146px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544716475957672930" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxxHkDuI9aj7Mlfxq4dbOE-QNYGn3PbyIIae4VmgiOI7_luwQJSSMivMujznpjNfev5y7i9E7uWLvb_LoVDd4m55jqujm36qU4bwe266lF98OoxAeAObZAaeJ-gKraUX7Gx7T8Qm9FN3o/s320/stage-12_labelled.png" /></a><br /><!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It maybe that the children would enjoy seeing the animation more than the film of the robots. There is also the question of whether the animation should show the 'tracks in the sand' or not.</span></span></p>Frances Griffithshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02291897618954413098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-18808445314770674272010-11-27T10:23:00.000+00:002010-11-27T10:37:23.365+00:00Open Science and the Artificial Culture Project<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">From the start of our project, the intention has been to make it open to all who are interested, and to enable this by having an interactive project website and to put our data on the website. The idea of open science was new to me but immediately seemed attractive. Why? Here are some reasons I find persuasive. Open science opens up opportunities for ideas to flow into the project from anyone who is interested. It increases access to the process of doing science to the public and makes us as scientists more directly accountable to the public. It allows others to analyse our data to check our analysis or try new ways of doing the analysis and there is potential for others to discern emergent patterns in the data or maybe the research process, that we as a team do not notice as we are part of the project.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So why have I found it hard to write about the project on our project blog? </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There are technical reasons such as forgetting the password for signing in and not being online when I have an idea for a blog entry. However, a deeper reason is feeling I do not have anything worth saying – or at least not yet.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">My ‘not yet’ includes a whole mixture of assumptions and feelings of which these are a few have clarified through discussion with </span></span><a href="http://www.scu.uwe.ac.uk/index.php?q=node/181"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ann Grand</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and </span></span><a href="http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/~a-winfie/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Alan Winfield</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The process of doing research is not interesting, only the result, and even then the result should have some obvious implications for the global community and environment.</span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i></i>Actually I don’t believe that. As a sociologist my research includes the study of processes of doing and using science. Science involves a lot of people working away at small parts of a problem, without being sure of the implications of what they are doing. If we knew the results of our research beforehand it would not be research. We can of course suggest why it might be important to investigate a particular aspect of the world, but we cannot know for sure that our research will have impact.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Research is about finding new knowledge so it I need to check something is new before I talk about it.</span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i></i>To be sure of this takes a lot of time as it involves searching the literature and reading everything that is relevant. This approach dominates health sciences and arguably is the appropriate approach in this field of research, which is applied to improving health. However, from working with scientists from other disciplines, I understand that there is not this obsession with searching for all relevant literature. The difference seems to be that in health sciences we are often working from a current understanding of a biological, psychological or social mechanism and then testing whether an intervention, based on this understanding, then makes a difference when used in a population. In biological, and indeed social science, we are more often seeking to understand the mechanism. This demands a different critical approach to what is already known.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But there are also feelings..</span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i></i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So far my reasons for ‘not yet’ are bound up with the research disciplines in which I work – sociology and health sciences. However there are also my feelings. There is the fear that people will judge me negatively and the fear that people will take my ideas and beat me to the credit. These fears seem to be contradictory, suggesting that I feel I am both a terrible scientist and a brilliant scientist. Having contradictory feelings is very normal. However, I think these fears are bound up with the results of research rather than the process. I know it is possible to undertake research that has a rigorous process but does not make a world-changing discovery. I spend time teaching rigorous research processes to students. So, although the feelings are unlikely to go away, I can perhaps muster the confidence to open up the research process to scrutiny. Anyway, if I do have a good idea and then someone else gets the credit, I will be in the good company of all the other scientists who have put in place the building blocks for the world-changing discovery.</span></span></p><!--EndFragment-->Frances Griffithshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02291897618954413098noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-51042665994502624452010-09-29T03:40:00.000+01:002010-11-25T20:43:11.636+00:00Robot imitation as a method for modelling the foundations of social lifeRobot imitation as a method for modelling the foundations of social life: a meeting of robotics and sociology to explore the spread of behaviours through mimesis<br />
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Here is the video, posted earlier this month by <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/med/staff/griffiths/">Frances Griffiths</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxaRHcHziec">YouTube</a>, of the meeting <span style="font-style: italic;">of robotics and sociology</span> I blogged about on <a href="http://artcultprojectblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/warwick-mimesis-project-visit-to-lab.html">21st June</a>. No need for me to write anything more - <a href="http://www.jumpoffthescreen.com/">Roger Stotesbury's</a> excellent 10 minute film explains the whole thing...<br />
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<object height="250" width="400"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hxaRHcHziec?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hxaRHcHziec?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="250" width="400"></embed></object>Alan Winfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08263812573346115168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-6889745952485067742010-07-17T22:50:00.000+01:002010-11-25T20:41:30.667+00:00Open-ended Memetic Evolution, or is it?Just finished a paper describing some new results on open-ended memetic evolution from the <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/artcultproject/">Artificial Culture project</a>. I describe in some detail one particular experiment in which <a href="http://alanwinfield.blogspot.com/2009/02/e-puck-imitation.html">2 robots imitate each others' movements</a>. However, here the robots don't simply imitate the last thing they saw; instead they learn and save every observed movement sequence, then when it's a robot's turn to dance it selects one of its 'learned' dances, from memory, at random.<br />
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Here is a plot of the movements of the 2 robots for one particular experiment; this picture has been generated by a tool developed by <a href="http://people.brl.ac.uk/people/template.jsp?username=Wenguo">Wenguo Liu</a> that allows us to 'play back' the tracking data recorded by the Vicon position tracking system. The visualisation tool changes the colour of each 'dance', which makes it much easier to then analyse what's going on during the experiment.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrc_vV0Bk_SHGuLBYo77d4Vr19fiMmiaDOK6nPUNLt51gO3b08onpUQGmEcAPzM3SD40m34YUEE7sRqyUNaQifRiP6VWek5hG2VwdIoYxazvxYwbYZUx39vXa234CII-BbmMzT21Cdzb6V/s1600/stage-12_labelled.png"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 182px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrc_vV0Bk_SHGuLBYo77d4Vr19fiMmiaDOK6nPUNLt51gO3b08onpUQGmEcAPzM3SD40m34YUEE7sRqyUNaQifRiP6VWek5hG2VwdIoYxazvxYwbYZUx39vXa234CII-BbmMzT21Cdzb6V/s400/stage-12_labelled.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537653852352252274" border="0" /></a><br />
Epuck 9 (on the left) starts by making a 3 sided 'triangle' dance, numbered 1 above. Epuck 12 (on the right) then imitates this - badly - as meme number 2, which is a kind of figure-of-8 pattern. It is interesting to see that this 4-sided figure-of-8 movement pattern then appears to become dominant, perhaps because of the initially poor fidelity imitation (1 → 2), then the high fidelity imitation of 2 by epuck9 (2 → 3), then the re-enaction of meme 2 as meme 4. And then subsequent copies of the same figure-of-8 meme then appear to be reasonably good copies, which reinforces the dominance of that meme.<br />
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Since the robots are selecting which observed and learned meme to enact, at random, then there is no 'direction' to the meme evolution here. Memes can get longer or shorter - both in the number of sides to the movement pattern, and the length of those sides, and the resulting patterns arise in an unpredictable way from the imperfect 'embodied' imitation of the robots. Thus, we appear to have demonstrated here, open-ended memetic evolution.Alan Winfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08263812573346115168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-39569778080972594462010-06-22T03:30:00.000+01:002010-11-25T20:12:35.361+00:00Warwick Mimesis project visit to the labAs a follow-up to a <a href="http://alanwinfield.blogspot.com/2009/12/mimetic-factors-in-health-and-well.html">talk I gave last December in Warwick</a>, we were visited in the lab today by a group of social and complexity scientists from Warwick including <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/med/staff/griffiths/">Frances Griffiths</a>, <a href="http://www.warwick.ac.uk/%7Esysdt/Index.html">Steve Fuller </a>and <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wie/staff/teaching-research/nick_lee/">Nick Lee</a>. We had a hugely interesting day discussing the extent to which (or, indeed, if at all) robots could be used to model mimesis in society.<br />
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The day started with me describing the embodied imitation-of-movement experiments that we are currently doing here within the <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/artcultproject/">Artificial Culture project</a>, and demonstrating the latest version of the Copybots experiment. After lunch we then had a round table discussion about whether or not such a simple model might have value in social science research and - somewhat to my surprise - there seemed to be strong consensus that there is value and that this (radical) new approach to embodied modelling is something we should actively pursue in future joint projects.<br />
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The meeting was filmed by Roger Stotesbury of <a href="http://www.jumpoffthescreen.com/">Jump Off The Screen</a> and I hope to post a link to the video record of the meeting on this blog.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Postscript:</span> <a href="http://alanwinfield.blogspot.com/2010/09/robot-imitation-as-method-for-modelling.html">here is my blog post with Roger's film of the meeting</a>.Alan Winfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08263812573346115168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-53418089162615557502010-04-30T02:30:00.000+01:002010-11-25T20:10:20.039+00:00EPSRC HOW? eventSpent a most interesting day today at <a href="http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/Pages/default.aspx">EPSRC</a> HQ in Swindon. I was one of several academics asked to come and exhibit their work to the staff of the EPSRC. The idea of the event was to enable <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> of the staff of the council to get an insight into the research that EPSRC funds when, in the normal course of events (I guess), only a relatively few would get to see that research - programme managers for instance.<br />
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I took along some e-pucks and a portable arena, which proved very popular, together with this poster for the Artificial Culture project.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqDsX8Qlh5uX8FTsJaf6qlOjK0DnMy01oZpf-lI-cA8NwQsslvvPWFtW04JVhhwDwhMg41v6HuuPINl-29n-ZZZqnWohHO5LUnTrT-RcFAzluY5xbGuwl-AnYjemGlnopfonI10p_ng_D0/s1600/ACposter.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 282px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqDsX8Qlh5uX8FTsJaf6qlOjK0DnMy01oZpf-lI-cA8NwQsslvvPWFtW04JVhhwDwhMg41v6HuuPINl-29n-ZZZqnWohHO5LUnTrT-RcFAzluY5xbGuwl-AnYjemGlnopfonI10p_ng_D0/s400/ACposter.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5533149770653659554" border="0" /></a>Alan Winfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08263812573346115168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-50333566174901598972009-12-16T23:52:00.000+00:002010-11-25T15:15:29.249+00:00Mimetic Factors in Health and Well-beingOn Monday I gave a talk at an amazingly interesting workshop in Warwick. Part of a project called <a href="http://www.politics.co.uk/opinion-formers/events/health/esrc-14th-october-mimetic-factors-in-health-and-well-being-workshop-1-$1331504$365399.htm">Mimetic Factors in Health and Well-being</a>, the workshop brought together a very diverse range of disciplines: sociology, medicine, systems science and robotics (and I may have missed a few).<br />
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Project lead, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_%28sociologist%29">Steve Fuller</a>, gave a great talk which reflected on both memetics (pre-Dawkins), and mimesis in advertising and PR. I found myself being introduced first to French sociologist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Tarde">Gabriel Tarde</a> who, who - according to Steve Fuller - first articulated the pivotal role of imitation in society. Then to contemporary French social and cognitive scientist, and by the looks of it all round genius, <a href="http://www.dan.sperber.fr/">Dan Sperber</a>. I can see that I have to add Sperber to my reading list!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7jgCaGwqiAkDKA9PB-xRg6G9Hxaom5NpXmOvaL9-_Q7ckmqCKyJZtf5En6CRPSa0SrCPGaVcC2gQLvztRovxiQBPngqdfqqDqBLbIlipqY9B6iluiKzelwWxlEKhD3wFOrJOizB82HvXJ/s1600-h/Warwick_talk_titlepage.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5415867529543556162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7jgCaGwqiAkDKA9PB-xRg6G9Hxaom5NpXmOvaL9-_Q7ckmqCKyJZtf5En6CRPSa0SrCPGaVcC2gQLvztRovxiQBPngqdfqqDqBLbIlipqY9B6iluiKzelwWxlEKhD3wFOrJOizB82HvXJ/s320/Warwick_talk_titlepage.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 234px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 320px;" /></a>Alan Winfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08263812573346115168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-66546849523389268142009-09-26T22:44:00.000+01:002009-09-26T22:49:37.354+01:00Project Meeting in Warwick<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIbqPhZT1rY9cNAYRS99z2Qp0dPi3SY5GTxh-s16nwBjE-BL-94XFfJUDZ6tqb8SNvW8iwk9ziGi9cO_WR8nRi1VF1lxAK3DLjEuHWzu6MzKxNKklzzwQC7uPVCCSKcKM2JNzwjJYGIcS0/s1600-h/DSC01644_m.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 331px; height: 248px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIbqPhZT1rY9cNAYRS99z2Qp0dPi3SY5GTxh-s16nwBjE-BL-94XFfJUDZ6tqb8SNvW8iwk9ziGi9cO_WR8nRi1VF1lxAK3DLjEuHWzu6MzKxNKklzzwQC7uPVCCSKcKM2JNzwjJYGIcS0/s320/DSC01644_m.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385750100190262258" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Yesterday we had a full <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/artcultproject/">artificial culture project</a> team meeting in Warwick, following on from the EmergeNet meeting on Thursday (see my <a href="http://alanwinfield.blogspot.com/2009/09/encyclopaedias-and-emergence-in-warwick.html">blog post</a>). An excellent meeting, significant because we are now exactly half way through the project. Having spent much of the first two years of the project building the <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/artcultproject/artificial-culture-lab">artificial culture lab</a>, the project is now moving into the experimental phase. Having built our microscope we can now start looking through it.<br /><br />The experimental phase of the project brings new challenges and we spent much of yesterday's meeting discussing and crystallising the detailed research questions that our experiments must address. Of course project team members each have questions and ideas that we want to address within our respective disciplines, but there must be overarching project-wide questions. Alistair led this discussion, wisely warning against the 'so what' problem ("Hey we've discovered x. Hmm interesting, but so what"). Taking a theory motivated approach, Alistair proposes four research questions addressing some key problems with the memetic theory of cultural evolution:<br /><ol><li>What is the effect of <span style="font-style: italic;">fidelity of imitation</span> on meme transmission?</li><li>What is the effect of <span style="font-style: italic;">selection</span>?</li><li>What is the effect of <span style="font-style: italic;">size/granularity </span>(of the meme)?</li><li>What is the effect of <span style="font-style: italic;">complexity </span>within the meme?</li></ol>Alan Winfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08263812573346115168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-54174387018799245452009-08-19T15:11:00.000+01:002010-11-25T15:13:04.207+00:00Lying RobotsAndy Guest wrote:<br /><br />A colleague just sent me a link to an article on Wired. An experiment on evolving robot signalling.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/real-life-decepticons-robots-learn-to-cheat/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/real-life-decepticons-robots-learn-to-cheat/</a>Frances Griffithshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02291897618954413098noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-17401437454455003292009-06-26T02:31:00.000+01:002010-11-25T15:11:27.949+00:00Chimpanzee culture on Material WorldThere was a great piece on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00l5nbc">this afternoon's Material World</a> - an interview with Andrew Whiten about cultural traditions in chimpanzees. Andrew Whiten makes the very interesting observation that while many animals appear to have 'traditions' (i.e. separate groups of the same bird species with different birdsong), chimpanzee have dozens of traditions. Does this mean that chimps have culture? I think so, yes.<br />
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Chimp culture appears, however, to have remained relatively static - Whiten observes that archeological investigation has shown traditions to have persisted for hundreds if not thousands of years. Longer, I would suspect, given that anatomically modern chimps have been around for over six million years. In other words, the big bang of human cultural evolution has never happened for chimps. What cognitive deficit in chimps might account for this..?Alan Winfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08263812573346115168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-90722040852876952702009-06-20T01:20:00.000+01:002010-11-25T15:06:39.865+00:00Artificial Culture web pages now upCheck out our new Artificial Culture project web pages:<br />
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<a href="http://sites.google.com/site/artcultproject/"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5351673877558190930" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy8a7OQqzAC_m7RoTukE2Vu58ZkNWGC5RyJa3UJEDrMHvfL_CYV40NhDjOtq8yzmRQa12oNBKXnXvyNElfojFj2Q5p_B1qaIDqOZAsd-RemlHfN-gZ5TPpR8aiDxrlv2o4ZppMCmQEx4FP/s400/ArtCultfrontpagegrab.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 327px; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
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These have been built using <a href="http://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en-GB/overview.html">Google Sites</a>. A remarkably straightforward way to create both the structure and content for a set of web pages, without HTML coding (actually I did have to tweak the code a couple of times). Integration with other Google applications means, for instance, that <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/artcultproject/image-galleries/robot-images">creating a slide show of images</a> needs you only to upload the images to a Picasa album, then insert the slideshow gadget and point to the Picasa URL. Add another image to the album and it automatically appears in your web site slide show.<br />
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There is one limitation: while invited collaborators can sign-in and add comments - in blog fashion - to existing posts (as well as create and edit new pages), ordinary visitors to the web site cannot. Given that blog functionality is clearly built into the <span style="font-style: italic;">sites</span> technology, it ought to be straightforward to provide an option to allow comments to be submitted, to selected pages, by non signed-in visitors. Or a blog gadget. Google..?Alan Winfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08263812573346115168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-29952595636833353612009-06-18T15:04:00.000+01:002010-11-25T15:14:19.104+00:00A working definition for artificial cultureWritten by Alan Winfield (transfered by Frances Griffiths prior to deletion of a Wiki page)<br />There are many definitions for Culture - see for instance the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Wiki article on Culture</a>. Most, perhaps not surprisingly, are human centred. The Oxford English Dictionary, for instance, defines culture simply as "patterns of human behaviour".<br /><br />In this project we clearly need a working definition for culture, or to be precise, artificial culture, that makes sense both for robots, but has sufficient generality to allow us to (possibly) construct hypotheses about the processes and mechanisms for the emergence of human culture by analogy with our emerging artificial (robot) culture. (If, indeed, anything we can claim as artificial culture does emerge.)<br /><br />A folk-definition of culture is simply <b>the way we do things around here</b>. This has some merit firstly because it is not species specific, and might apply to humans, whales, robots, or aliens. And secondly, because it is a differential rather than absolute definition - implying that the way one group does things is different to the way another group does (the same?) things.<br /><br />Let me propose a working definition for artificial culture based on this:<br /><br />Artificial (robot) culture is defined as: <i>sustained and measurable emerging differences in behaviour between two or more groups of robots, where those groups have divided or split off from a common ancestral group, and the behaviours are traceable to common root behaviours in the ancestral group.</i>Frances Griffithshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02291897618954413098noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4362726395896902286.post-21174926031421968882009-06-15T09:47:00.000+01:002009-06-15T09:50:25.485+01:00Welcome to the project blog for the <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/artcultproject/">Artificial Culture project</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://alanwinfield.blogspot.com/search/label/artificial%20culture">For earlier blogs on this project click here.</a>Alan Winfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08263812573346115168noreply@blogger.com2