Cognition & Interaction Lab

Research in the Cognition & Interaction Lab (COIN) is focused on embodied / situated / distributed cognition in natural and artificial cognitive systems - in particular:

  • sensorimotor interaction between cognitive agents (humans, animals, robots) and their environments,
  • social interaction between people, between robots, and not least between humans and robots, and
  • human interaction with different types of information technology, in particular decision support systems and computer games.

In terms of methodologies used, most of our projects currently are in bio-inspired cognitive robotics and (neuro-) computational modeling, but we are also working with cognitive ethnography of human-machine and human-human interaction, motion capture and behavioral experiments with human subjects.

 

Projects

New European projects in the area of cognitive systems & robotics:

  • NeuralDynamics ("A neuro-dynamic framework for cognitive robotics: Autonomous generation of scene representations and behavioral sequences using online learning"), 2011-2015 (details still under negotiation), coordinator: Prof Gregor Schöner, Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Our lab's focus in this project is on the role of motivation in the organization of sequential behavior and goal-directed sequence generation.
  • EUCogIII - the successor to the EUCogII network (cf below), late 2011 to late 2014 (details still under negotiation).

Current European cognitive systems & robotics projects that we are involved in:

  • ROSSI, an FP7 STREP project on sensorimotor and social interaction (human-humanoid) and concept/language grounding, running March 2008 - February 2011. Our lab's focus in ROSSI is on neurocomputational / dynamic-field- theoretical models of the mirror neuron system as well as action segmentation.
  • ROBOT-DOC, a Marie Curie Initial Training Network on developmental cognitive/humanoid robotics, September 2009 - September 2013. Our lab's focus in ROBOT-DOC is on affective / emotional / motivational mechanisms in (humanoid) cognitive / developmental robotics.
  • EUCogII, an FP7 network project on cognitive systems, running February 2009 - January 2012.

Recently finished European projects:

  • ICEA, an FP6 integrated project on biologically inspired robotics and brain-based cognitive architectures, coordinated by our lab, which ran January 2006 - December 2009.  The final review was in March 2010 and the project is considered "completed successful". Our lab's focus in ICEA was on cognitive-affective neurocomputational architectures.
  • euCognition, January 2006 - December 2008, was the predecessor to EUCogII and EUCogIII (cf above).

Other current externally funded projects:

 

Staff

The COIN lab currently consists of the following people.

Full professor(s)

Assistant professors

Postdocs

PhD students

  • Hiran Ekanayake - affective computing & games
  • Kiril Kiryazov - ROBOT-DOC
  • Gauss Lee (Li Cai) - ROBOT-DOC
  • Alberto Montebelli – ICEA (planning to defend his PhD thesis in early 2011)
  • Maria Nilsson – InfoFusion (planning to defend her PhD thesis Jan 14)
  • Jana Rambusch – computer games (planning to defend her PhD thesis Jan 28)
  • Henrik Svensson

Robots

  • One Nao humanoid, inventively called "Nao".
  • A number of wheeled robots: some e-pucks, some old Kheperas, and a very, very old Nomad 200 called "Marvin".

 


Updated: 8/4/2010
Page editor: Tom Ziemke

Contact

Tom Ziemke

Cognition & Interaction Lab
Informatics Research Centre
University of Skövde
PO Box 408
54128 Skövde, Sweden

Visits: Kanikegränd 3A

tom.ziemke@his.se  

+46 - (0)705 - 441444
+46 - (0)500 - 448330