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18/08/2009 20/08/2009

The Second International Workshop on Guided Self-Organisation (GSO-2009)

Research Aim and Topics:
The workshop brings together invited experts and researchers in self-organising systems, following up www.prokopenko.net/gso.html - external>The First International Workshop on Guided Self-Organisation GSO-2008.
Self-organization is one of the most striking phenomena in nature. A broad definition of self-organization is given by Hermann Haken, the founder of synergetics: "A system is self-organizing if it acquires a spatial, temporal or functional structure without specific interference from the outside. By 'specific' we mean that the structure or functioning is not impressed on the system, but that the system is acted upon from the outside in a non-specific fashion."
In biology, a related definition is offered by Camazine et al.: "Self-organization is a process in which pattern at the global level of a system emerges solely from numerous interactions among the lower-level components of the system.
Moreover, the rules specifying interactions among the system's components are executed using only local information, without reference to the global pattern".
Self-organisation within a system brings about several attractive properties, in particular, robustness, adaptability and scalability. In the face of perturbations caused by adverse external factors or internal component failures, a robust self-organising system continues to function. Moreover, an adaptive system may re-configure when required, degrading in performance "gracefully" rather than catastrophically. In certain circumstances, a system may need to be extended with new components and/or new connections among existing modules — without self-organization such scaling must be pre-optimised in advance, overloading the traditional design process.
However, by its very nature, self-organization more often than not has its own way. To be useful in practice, methods of guiding self-organization towards prespecified goals have to be developed. Adding and controlling constraints provides one possibility to this end.
Many properties of self-organisation can be characterised formally (e.g., information-theoretically). However, the lack of agreement of what is meant by complexity, constraints, etc, as well as a common methodology across multiple scales leaves any definition of self-organisation somehow vague, indicating a clear gap. Filling this gap and identifying common principles of guidance are the main themes of GSO-2009. The workshop will put particular emphasis on principles based on information flows through the perception-action loop of embodied systems.

Speakers

Tony Bell

University of California, Berkeley, USA

Georg Martius

MPI for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Germany

Daniel Polani

University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom

Susanne Still

University of Hawaii, USA

Florentin Wörgötter

University of Göttingen, Germany

Larry Yaeger

Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

Program

07:00 - 20:00
09:50 - 00:00
10:00 - 11:15
Keynote by:
Susanne Still (University of Hawaii, USA)
Interactive learning

11:15 - 11:30
11:30 - 12:00 Ralf Der (MPI MiS Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany)
Self-organization of behavior for autonomous robots
12:00 - 15:00
15:00 - 16:15
Keynote by:
Daniel Polani (University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom)
Be empowered: guiding adaptation through potential information flows

16:15 - 16:30
16:30 - 17:00 Nils Bertschinger (MPI MiS Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany)
Autonomy and closure
17:00 - 17:30 Oliver Obst (CSIRO ICT Centre, Sydney, Australia)
Information transfer in recurrent neural networks
19:00 - 00:00
07:00 - 20:00
10:00 - 11:15
Keynote by:
Larry Yaeger (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA)
Determining function from structure in neural networks

11:15 - 11:30
11:30 - 12:00 Mikhail Prokopenko (CSIRO ICT Centre, Sydney, Australia)
Information-theoretic modelling of scaling in genetic code
12:00 - 12:30 Ivan Tanev (Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan)
Incremental genetic programming incorporating genetic transpositions for efficient coevolution of locomotion and sensing of simulated snake-like robot
12:30 - 13:00 Christian Tetzlaff (Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany)
Self-organized criticality of developing artificial neuronal networks and dissociated cell cultures
13:00 - 15:00
15:00 - 16:15
16:15 - 16:30
16:30 - 17:00 Mahendra Piraveenan (CSIRO ICT Centre, Sydney, Australia)
Assortativity and information in directed biological networks
17:00 - 17:30 Joseph Lizier (CSIRO ICT Centre, Sydney, Australia)
Functional and structural topologies in evolved neural networks
07:00 - 20:00
10:00 - 11:15
Keynote by:
Florentin Wörgötter (University of Göttingen, Germany)
Self-organized adaptation of simple neural circuits enables complex robot behavior

11:15 - 11:30
11:30 - 12:00 Mikhail Prokopenko (CSIRO ICT Centre, Sydney, Australia)
Information transfer and cortical interactions in a visuomotor tracking task
12:00 - 12:30 J. Michael Herrmann (University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom)
Guided self-organization for control of bipedal walking
12:30 - 13:00 Paolo Arena (Università degli studi di Catania, Catania, Italy)
Spatial temporal patterns in nonlinear dynamical systems: from locomotion to perception in biorobots
13:00 - 15:00
15:00 - 16:15
Keynote by:
Georg Martius (MPI for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany)
Goal-oriented behavior from guided self-organization of sensorimotor loops

16:15 - 16:30
16:30 - 17:00 Frank Güttler (Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany)
Predictive Information for self-organizing robots using wireless connected embedded-controller-boards: a technical point of view
17:00 - 17:30 Keyan Zahedi (MPI MiS Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany)
Maximizing information in the sensory-motor loop

Participants

Paolo Arena

Università degli studi di Catania

Tony Bell

University of California, Berkeley

Nils Bertschinger

MPI MiS Leipzig

Martin Bogdan

Universität Leipzig

Matthew Chadwick

celeriac.net, Stroud

Minjie Chen

Technische Universitaet Berlin

Ralf Der

MPI MiS Leipzig

Karim El-Laithy

Universität Leipzig

Jan Friedrich

Universität Leipzig

Frank Güttler

Universität Leipzig

Mario Heidenreich

Universität Leipzig

J. Michael Herrmann

University of Edinburgh

Frank Hesse

Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, BCCN Göttingen, Georg August University Göttingen

Jörn Hoffmann

Universität Leipzig

Joseph Lizier

CSIRO ICT Centre, Sydney

Georg Martius

MPI for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen

Norbert Michael Mayer

National Chung Cheng University, Min-Hsiung

Oliver Obst

CSIRO ICT Centre, Sydney

Matthias Ongyerth

, Leipzig

Mahendra Piraveenan

CSIRO ICT Centre, Sydney

Daniel Polani

University of Hertfordshire

Mikhail Prokopenko

CSIRO ICT Centre, Sydney

Dieter Rembisch

EDV-Rembisch, Frankfurt/Main

Michael Steyer

University of Leipzig

Susanne Still

University of Hawaii

Ivan Tanev

Doshisha University, Kyoto

Christian Tetzlaff

Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen

Florentin Wörgötter

University of Göttingen

Larry Yaeger

Indiana University, Bloomington

Keyan Zahedi

MPI MiS Leipzig

Scientific Organizers

Nihat Ay

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig

Ralf Der

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig

Mikhail Prokopenko

CSIRO, Sydney

Administrative Contact

Antje Vandenberg

Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik in den Naturwissenschaften Contact via Mail