Apologies for duplicate copies! In case anyone is curious, I wanted to provide a brief summary of the developmental robotics workshop that took place last week:<br><br>In the interests of outreach and improving collaboration between computational and behavioral researchers, Jochen Triesch and I organized a half-day workshop (<a href="http://icdl-epirob.org/icisdevrob2012.html" target="_blank">http://icdl-epirob.org/icisdevrob2012.html</a>) a day before the <i>International Conference on Infant Studies </i>in Minneapolis. The invited speakers were Minoru Asada (Osaka University), Chen Yu (Indiana University), Giorgio Metta (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), Tony Morse (University of Plymouth), Javier Movellan (UC San Diego), Katharina Rohlfing (University of Bielefeld), and Brian Scassellati (Yale University). <br>
<br>The presentations were superb, and very well-pitched to a broad, interdisciplinary audience. There were also lots of great examples that illustrated different robot platforms, as well as ways to model developmental change in artificial systems. Given my experiences in psychology, I thought each speaker did an outstanding job of making their work accessible and relevant to developmental researchers. Despite a packed schedule, and competition with other parallel workshops, we maintained a steady audience of 40-50 guests (including a mixture of both computational/robotics and psychology people). There was also a good level of discussion and engagement from the audience throughout the workshop.<br>
<br>Given the success of our first attempt, we are now thinking about following up with a similar event at next year's <i>Society for Research in Child Development </i>meeting in Seattle (April 18-20). It's difficult to imagine, but since the SRCD meeting is less than a year away, we should starting planning very soon if indeed we want to host a workshop. If so, we should also think about ways to improve on what we accomplished this year, in particular, moving the process from interaction and dialog to collaboration and long-term interaction!<br>
<br>Don't hesitate to email me or Jochen (<a href="mailto:triesch@fias.uni-frankfurt.de">triesch@fias.uni-frankfurt.de</a>) if you have any questions. Cheers,<br><br>Matt<br>