Seminar: Evolutionary Robotics, by Prof. Dario Floreano from EPFL

The Graduate School would like to invite you to a seminar by Prof. Dario Floreano, from Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, EPFL, Switzerland. This talk will be introduced by Prof. Kenji Doya from Neural Computation Unit.

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Date:   Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Time:  10:00 – 11:00

Venue: Seminar Room B503, Level B, Lab 1

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Speaker:

Prof. Dario Floreano

Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, EPFL, Switzerland

Swiss National Center of Robotics

Title:

Evolutionary Robotics

Abstract:

Evolutionary Robotics is a method to automatically develop control systems and robot morphologies by means of artificial evolution and is also a method to use robots for exploring open questions in evolutionary biology. In this talk I will give examples of both uses of Evolutionary Robotics. For example, I will show remarkably simple and yet effective neuronal control systems evolved for driving terrestrial and flying robots in situations for which no human-designed solution was available, I will describe the evolution of learning in neural systems, and I will show experiments that provide new suggestions on the evolution of altruistic behavior and communication. I will also briefly describe experiments of competing robots that inspired the book Prey by science fiction writer Michael Crichton. 

Biography:

Prof. Dario Floreano is Director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). He holds an M.A. in visual psychophysics (1988), an M.S. in Neural Computation, (1991) and a PhD in Robotics (1995). He held research positions at Sony, NASA/Caltech JPL, and Harvard University. In 2011 he started the Swiss National Center of Robotics funded by the Swiss government for up to 12 years to bring together EPFL, ETH, University of Zurich to promote research, education, and technology transfer in wearable and rescue robots in Switzerland. Prof. Floreano's research focuses on the convergence of biology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and robotics. He published more than 300 articles and 4 books on Artificial Neural Networks, Evolutionary Robotics, Bio-inspired artificial intelligence, and Bio-inspired Flying Robots with MIT Press and Springer Verlag. He has been a founding member of the World Economic Forum Council on robotics and smart devices, co-founder of the International Society of Artificial Life, Inc. (USA), and executive board member of the International Society for Neural Networks. His research activities have resulted in two successful spin-off companies: senseFly Ltd. and Flyability Ltd.

We hope to see many of you there.

Sincerely,

Academic Services Section