Workshop on Biologically Inspired Information Fusion
Dates
Start date: 7 August 2006
End date: 6 October 2006
Summary
Our understanding of both natural and artificial cognitive systems is an exciting area of research that is developing into a multi-disciplinary subject with the potential for significant impact on science, engineering and society in general. There is considerable interest in how our understanding of natural systems may help us to apply biological strategies to artificial systems. Of particular interest is our understanding of how to build adaptive information fusion systems by combining knowledge from different domains. In natural systems, the integration of sensory information is learnt at an early stage of development. Therefore, through a better understanding of the structures and processes involved in this natural adaptive integration, we may be able to construct a truly artificial multi-sensory processing system. Conversely, knowledge from theoretical work on information fusion may give a better understanding of the biology and behaviour of natural sensory systems. Here then, psychological and physiological knowledge of multi-sensory processing, and particularly the low level influence that different modalities have on one another, can be used to build upon existing theoretical work on computational mechanisms, such as self organisation and the combination of multiple neural networks, to help build systems that can fuse together different information sources. However, success in this area depends upon a cross-discipline understanding of these subjects.
Objectives
The workshop on biologically inspired information fusion was held to address this issue, attempting to bring together both life and physical scientists to discuss research from the perspective of the different disciplines, focused on the common theme of information fusion. The aim was to promote collaboration between the disciplines to develop an understanding of how to build adaptive information fusion systems. This initial workshop was targeted at bringing the disciplines together and helping improve our understanding of both the natural and artificial domains. This was achieved through a two-day programme of tutorials, discussion sessions, student presentations and brainstorming.
Impacts
This project has successfully met its objectives with a workshop programme designed to promote training and discussion. Participation exceeded target with 47 international participants, drawn from the disciplines of biology, psychology, computer science and robotics, including international research leaders in each field. Papers and discussion session abstracts were submitted to the workshop from each of the disciplines, resulting in four tutorials, four discussion sessions and three student presentations, each of which provoked lively debate and demonstrated the necessity of cross-discipline collaboration. Workshop activities also included three brainstorming sessions to help form cross-discipline research priorities. As a result of these activities, cross-discipline collaboration has been achieved, with at least two follow-up projects already being planned to develop adaptive models of multi-sensory integration. Evaluation of the objectives was carried out at the end of the workshop through anonymous questionnaire returned by over half the participants, with the majority of respondents reporting that the aim of the workshop had been met. The programme, proceedings and the final report for the workshop are available. All materials resulting from the workshop have been widely distributed, with further dissemination of the work via a special issue of the Information Fusion journal.
Funding
EPSRC (EP/E012795/1), IAS
Details
This project was done in collaboration with Dr Hujun Yin of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester.
The workshop consisted of invited tutorials from discipline leaders to help summarise current knowledge of their field for a multi-disciplinary audience. Rising to this challenge were Professor Barry Stein (Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest University School of Medicine), Dr Gemma Calvert (Multisensory Research Group in the Department of Psychology, University of Bath), Dr Charles Spence (Department of Psychology, Oxford University), Professor John Foxe (School of Psychology, City College of New York), Dr Belur Dasarathy (Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier Information Fusion Journal and technologies consultant) and Dr Gerard McKee (School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading). In addition to tutorials, discussion sessions were invited to provoke cross-discipline debate of ideas and questions. Accepted discussions were led by Professor Alex Thomson (Department of Pharmacology, University of London), Professor Hans Colonius (Department of Psychology, University of Oldenburg), Professor Robert Damper (School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton) and Professor Leslie Smith (Department of Computing Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling). Student papers were also invited for peer review, with three papers presented at the workshop.