Call for Workshop
Hybrid and Adaptive Systems for Real-time Robotics Vision and Control
Neural computation for motion tracking in biological and biomorphic systems
Neurocomputing and Evolving Intelligence - NCEI'08

Call for Workshop

The ICONIP 2008 Organizing Committee invites proposals for Workshops to be held at the 15th International Conference on Neural Information Processing of the Asia-Pacific Neural Network Assembly, APNNA, which will take place November 25-28th, 2008, in Auckland, New Zealand. We solicit proposals on any topic of interest to the ICONIP community (see the list of topics as below).

Workshops will be held on the 28th November, Friday in Dunedin and Auckland. The proposals will be accepted as they come based on merit and on the communication between co-chairs and after acceptance they will be immediately announced on the web page to be available as soon as possible to potential participants.

Topics
Understanding, modelling and curing the brain; Cognition and cognitive modelling; Novel neurocomputing methods; Neuro-informatics; Mathematics of the brain; Brain ontologies; Bioinformatics; Molecular computing; Quantum information processing; Novel methods of soft computing for adaptive modelling and knowledge discovery; Hybrid NN-, fuzzy-, evolutionary- algorithms; Methods of evolving intelligence (EI); Novel methods for Hybrid intelligent systems (HIS); Cellular automata; Artificial Life systems; Evolving molecular processes and their modelling; Evolving processes in the brain and their modelling; Evolving language and cognition; Quantum inspired computational intelligence; Adaptive speech, image and multimodal processing; Adaptive decision support systems; Dynamic time-series modelling; Adaptive control; Adaptive intelligent systems on the WWW; Applications in: Medicine, Health, Information Technologies, Horticulture, Agriculture, Bio-security, Business and finance, Process and robot control, Arts and Design; Adaptive integrated/embedded systems; Agent based systems.

Important dates
May 30th, 2008 Workshop proposal due
June 15th, 2008 Notification of acceptance

How to propose a workshop?
Workshop proposals should contain the necessary information for the workshop chair and reviewers from the conference organizing committee to judge the importance, quality and community interest in the proposed topic. Each workshop should have one or more designated organizers and a workshop program committee. When proposing a workshop, please provide (at least) the following information:

Topic: What will the workshop be about?
Goals: What do you expect will come out from the workshop?
Intended audience.
Publicity: How do you intend to publicise the workshop? How willreach the most interested and appropriate participants? Are there any plans to document the workshop results (beyond ICONIP 2008 publication).
The names, affiliations, postal address, phone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses of the workshop organizers (it is expected that organizers will be recognized experts in the related fields, and the organizing committee should include individuals from multiple institutions).
A list of potential program committee members, including their affiliations.
A draft workshop call for papers.

For all accepted proposals, ICONIP 2008 will be responsible for:

Providing conference software for paper upload and review process (obligatory)
Providing logistic support.
Providing electronic registration system.
Together with the organizers, determining the workshop date and time.
Accepted papers will be published in the Springer Lecture Note in Computer Science series.

Workshop organizers will be responsible for the following:

Setting up a web site for the workshop.
Advertising the workshop and issuing a call for participation/papers.
Collecting and evaluating submissions using the ICONIP 2008 conference software (mandatory), notifying authors of acceptance or rejection in due time, and ensuring a transparent and fair selection process. All workshop organizers are recommended to adopt the ICONIP 2008 deadlines for submissions and notifications of acceptance.

ICONIP 2008 Workshop Chairs

Mike Paulin, Otago university
Irwin King, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Kaori Yoshida, Kyushu Institute of Technology
Napoleon H. Reyes, Massey University

Proposed Workshops

Hybrid and Adaptive Systems for Real-time Robotics Vision and Control

Description: Real-time robotics vision and control has remained to be fertile grounds of research as there should be a striking balance between algorithm complexity and real-time efficacy. This workshop invites works that utilize the latest technology in hardware, matched with hybrid and adaptive algorithms that work in real-time robotics. Robotic demonstrations and simulations will accompany the workshop and a forum for a brief discussion of promising research topics with the participants will allow students to interact with the experts in the field.

Duration: 9:00 – 1:30pm
Venue: Massey University
Website: http://www.massey.ac.nz/~nhreyes/Massey/Workshop/Workshop.htm

Highlights:

Paper presentations
Simulations and Robotic Demonstrations
Open Forum
Short Tour of Massey University
Free lunch
Participants: ICONIP 2008 international conference attendees
Publication: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag. In addition, selected papers will be published in special issues of journals after the conference

Participants: ICONIP 2008 conference attendees

Publication: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag
In addition, selected papers will be published in special issues of journals after the conference

Neural computation for motion tracking in biological and biomorphic systems

Duration:

1-6pm, 28th November 2008, University of Otago, Dunedin
6-10pm Workshop dinner, Dunedi

Chair: Prof. Mike Paulin

Description: Brains can accurately predict and control the motion of bodies using noisy, delayed sense data. This ability provides a natural existence proof for distributed algorithms capable of very accurate real-time state estimation for high-dimensional nonlinear dynamical systems with noisy, delayed observations. The following topics are of interest: Motion sensing and perception in humans and other animals; Sensors and sensor arrays for source localization and tracking; Neural methods for extracting motion information from sensor arrays, e.g. optical or acoustic image processing; Neural computation for state estimation from sensor array data; Computational models of the cerebellum; Generic models for animal and biomorphic robot motion.

Papers must be submitted through the ICONIP 2008 on-line portal to this workshop.

Authors will be notified and must register for the conference to attend the Workshop.
Only presented papers will be published in the Springer conference proceedings after the conference.
A special issue of an international journal will be published after the conference that will include selected papers after extension.

Neurocomputing and Evolving Intelligence - NCEI'08

Duration: 28 November 2008, 9.00-13.00
Venue: AUT main campus, WA building, Wellesley, Auckland

Chairs:

Nik Kasabov, nkasabov@aut.ac.nz
Plamen Angelov, University of Lancaster, UK
Dimitar Filev, FORD, USA

Contact person: Joyce D'Mello, jdmello@aut.ac.nz
Technical contact person: Peter Hwang, phwang@aut.ac.nz

Submission of papers: as regular papers to the ICONIP conference submission site in the NCEI entry
Publications: LNCS, Springer. Selected and extended papers will be published in a special issue of the journal "Evolving Systems: Interdisciplinary Journal for Advanced Science and Technology", Springer

Description: The Workshop will include regular papers and a panel discussion on the topic, emphasising on interdisciplinary concept of evolvability in real and artificial systems - systems that evolve, develop their structure and functionality over time. That includes: evolving brains; evolving language; evolving consciousness; evolving quantum systems; evolving genetic processes; evolving hybrid, multilayer systems; evolving life; and their numerous applications in all areas of science and technology.

The workshop will be the 10th international scientific meeting in NZ on this topic, following the ANNES conferences (93,95,97,99,01), held at the University of Otago, and the NCEI conferences (02,03,04,06) held in Auckland.