UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
		COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

			     presents


        "Informational Principles of Perception-Action Loops 
                      and Collective Behaviours"


                       Philippe Capdepuy 
       (School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, UK)


                       3 March 2010 (Wednesday)
                        Lecture Theatre E351 
		   Hatfield, College Lane Campus
			      3 - 4 pm


		   Everyone is Welcome to Attend

                   Refreshments will be available



Abstract:

The information-theoretic perspective of the perception-action loop of embodied
agents has attracted a lot of interest in the recent years. Several research 
groups are now involved in this topic and their work has shed light on some 
fundamental aspects of cognition. Moreover, various information quantities have
been proposed as utilities to guide the self-organization of adaptive behaviour.
My PhD work is focused on one of these quantities: empowerment. It can be 
defined as a measure of the amount of control an agent has on its future 
sensoric inputs. This quantity was developed in the Adaptive Systems Research 
Group at the University of Hertfordshire during the PhD work of Alexander 
Klyubin, under Daniel Polani and Chrystopher Nehaniv's supervision.

During this talk I will present various uses of empowerment in adaptive agents,
and emphasize one of them: the ability to extract the underlying causal states 
of the environment that are relevant for the agent. Newly developed algorithms 
will be presented for this purpose. I will also extend the concept of 
empowerment to multiple agents. Using recent developments in information theory,
I will show how coordination between agents can emerge under empowerment 
maximization constraints, extending its field of application to the 
self-organization of multi-agent systems.


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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq