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                           Call for Papers

                    Birds-of-a-Feather Workshop on
       Evolution of Sensors in Nature, Hardware and Simulation

			  to be held at the
   2000 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'2000)

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A workshop on evolution of sensors in nature, hardware and simulation
is to be organized within the GECCO Genetic and Evolutionary
Computation Conference Sat, July 8 - Wed, July 12, 2000, Las Vegas,
USA. GECCO is the largest conference in the field of evolutionary
computation (GECCO-99 has had 619 attendees).



I. Workshop Description
-----------------------

In natural evolution one finds impressive examples for the principle of
exploiting new sensory channels and making use of the implicit
information they encode. Olfactory, tactile, auditive and visual, but
also e.g. electric and even magnetic senses have emerged in a vast
multitude of variants, often utilizing organs not originally "intended"
for the purpose they serve at present. Motivated by these observations,
the topic of sensor evolution is becoming a very modern and promising
direction of research situated between biology, robotics and Artificial
Life. Research in this direction strives at:

  1. insights into how biological systems evolve strategies to access
     new information channels
  2. new concepts for design of sensors for flexible and adaptive
     autonomous agents, an important issue in evolutionary robotics
  3. an understanding of the relationship between the information
     available to an agent and the way it is processed, which is of
     particular interest for Artificial Life research.

The intention of the workshop is to approach these questions by
studying biological systems as well as hardware or software
realizations of evolvable sensors.



II. Topics of interest
----------------------

Submissions are solicited on any of the following topics:

   o Sensor evolution in nature
   o General concepts for hardware and simulated sensor evolution
   o Hardware realizations of evolvable sensors
   o Simulation experiments modeling natural sensor evolution
   o Abstract sensor evolution models
   o Connection between evolution of sensors and of corresponding (e.g.
     neural) information processing
   o Feature identification as meta-sensors
   o Evolution of communication capabilities



III.  Submissions and Workshop format
------------------------------------

Prospective authors are requested to send their submissions (3-5 pages)
until March 1, 2000 to

  Daniel Polani
  Institut fuer Informatik
  Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet
  D-55099 Mainz, Germany
  polani@informatik.uni-mainz.de.

Electronic submissions (postscript or pdf only) are encouraged. In
case of a hardcopy submission please make sure the submissions are
received by the workshop organizers by March 1, 2000. In this case
please submit 3 copies of your paper. Accepted submissions will be
published in the GECCO workshop proceedings. The authors will have the
opportunity to present their papers during the workshop.  Following
the presentations a brainstorm session is envisaged.

See also: 

  http://www.informatik.uni-mainz.de/~polani/GECCO/ESNHS2000.html

For additional information about the workshop please send an e-mail to
the workshop chairs.



V. Workshop Chairs
------------------

Daniel Polani/Thomas Uthmann
Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz, Germany
E-mail: {polani,uthmann}@informatik.uni-mainz.de 

Kerstin Dautenhahn 
The University of Reading, UK 
E-mail: K.Dautenhahn@cyber.reading.ac.uk 



VI. Important Dates
-------------------

March  1, 2000: Submission due
March 20, 2000: Notification of acceptance
April 20, 2000: Camera-ready paper due.
July   8, 2000: Workshop (scheduled)