Owen Holland | University of Sussex (original) (raw)

Papers by Owen Holland

Kybernetes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the origins, members, activities, and influenc... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the origins, members, activities, and influence of the Ratio Club, a British cybernetic dining club that met between 1949 and 1958. Although its membership included some of the best known British cyberneticists, such as Grey Walter and Ross Ashby, along with pioneering scientists such as Alan Turing, the club is poorly documented, and its significance is difficult to establish from published sources. Design/methodology/approach – The approach involved the consultation and analysis of unpublished material in both private and public archives in the UK and the USA, coupled with interviews with surviving members, guests, and contemporaries. Findings – The Ratio Club grew out of a distinctively British strand of cybernetic activity that was mainly fuelled by the deployment of biologists to engineering activities during the Second World War. It was also strongly influenced by the approach of the psychologist Kenneth Craik. Although member...

IEEE Transactions on Rehabilitation Engineering, 1995

Abstract-An important factor in the acceptance of a prosthesis is the ease with which the wearer ... more Abstract-An important factor in the acceptance of a prosthesis is the ease with which the wearer can operate the device. Mul-tiple degrees of freedom of a prosthesis are difficult to control independently and require a high level of concentration. If the control is arranged in a hierarchical ...

2007 IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life, 2007

In this paper we try to develop predictors in order to drive a simulated car around a track witho... more In this paper we try to develop predictors in order to drive a simulated car around a track without the most recent sensor data. In order to test the predictive abilities of our car we developed two experiments: one where the sensor data was interrupted for a certain time and another where the sensor data is constantly delayed by a certain amount. The predictors are based on neural networks, and we compare backpropagation and evolutionary computation as methods of training these. In the end we found that predictors with good driving performance do not sample the set of predictors which minimize the prediction error in the sensors.

Neurocomputing, 2009

Imagination can be defined broadly as the manipulation of information that is not directly availa... more Imagination can be defined broadly as the manipulation of information that is not directly available to an agent's sensors. However, the topic of imagination raises representational, physiological, and phenomenological issues that cannot be tackled easily without using the body as a reference point. Within this framework, we define functional imagination as the mechanism that allows an embodied agent to simulate its own actions and their sensory consequences internally, and to extract behavioural benefits from doing so. In this paper, we present five necessary and sufficient requirements for the implementation of functional imagination, as well as a minimal architecture that meets all these criteria. We also present a taxonomy for categorising possible architectures according to their main attributes. Finally, we describe experiments with some simple architectures designed using these principles and implemented on simulated and real robots, including an extremely complex anthropomimetic humanoid.

As the MAV (Micro or Miniature Aerial Vehicles) field matures, we expect to see that the platform... more As the MAV (Micro or Miniature Aerial Vehicles) field matures, we expect to see that the platform's degree of autonomy, the information exchange, and the coordination with other manned and unmanned actors, will become at least as crucial as its aerodynamic design. The project described in this paper explores some aspects of a particularly exciting possible avenue of development: an

Proceedings 2005 IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, 2005. SIS 2005., 2005

Genetic programming (GP) is used to create fitness landscapes which highlight strengths and weakn... more Genetic programming (GP) is used to create fitness landscapes which highlight strengths and weaknesses of different types of PSO and to contrast population-based swarm approaches with non stochastic gradient followers (i.e. hill climbers). These automatically generated benchmark problems yield insights into the operation of PSOs, illustrate benefits and drawbacks of different population sizes and constriction (friction) coefficients, and reveal new swarm phenomena such as deception and the exploration/exploitation tradeoff. The method could be applied to any type of optimizer.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005

Particle Swarm Optimisers (PSOs) search using a set of interacting particles flying over the fitn... more Particle Swarm Optimisers (PSOs) search using a set of interacting particles flying over the fitness landscape. These are typically controlled by forces that encourage each particle to fly back both towards the best point sampled by it and towards the swarm's best. Here we explore the possibility of evolving optimal force generating equations to control the particles in a PSO using genetic programming.

2006 IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation, 2006

The problem of the automatic development of controllers for vehicles for which the exact characte... more The problem of the automatic development of controllers for vehicles for which the exact characteristics are not known is considered in the context of miniature helicopter flocking. A methodology is proposed in which neural network based controllers are evolved in a simulation using a dynamic model qualitatively similar to the physical helicopter. Several network architectures and evolutionary sequences are investigated, and two approaches are found that can evolve very competitive controllers. The division of the neural network into modules and of the task into incremental steps seems to be a precondition for success, and we analyse why this might be so.

Proceedings 2005 IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, 2005. SIS 2005., 2005

At one time or another we have all been impressed by the sheer agility of a flock of starlings fl... more At one time or another we have all been impressed by the sheer agility of a flock of starlings flying in a city square at dusk – wheeling and manoeuvring so swiftly and precisely as to create the illusion of a single and very superior controlling intelligence. Artificial flock and swarm ...

Proceedings of the 9th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation - GECCO '07, 2007

The problem of how to acquire a model of a physical robot, which is fit for evolution of controll... more The problem of how to acquire a model of a physical robot, which is fit for evolution of controllers that can subsequently be used to control that robot, is considered in the context of racing a radio-controlled toy car around a randomised track. Several modelling techniques are compared, and the specific properties of the acquired models that influence the quality of the evolved controller are discussed. As we aim to minimise the amount of domain knowledge used, we further investigate the relation between the assumptions about the modelled system made by particular modelling techniques and the suitability of the acquired models as bases for controller evolution. We find that none of the models acquired is good enough on its own, and that a key to evolving robust behaviour is to evaluate controllers simultaneously on multiple models during evolution. Examples of successfully evolved racing control for the physical car are analysed.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004

The two volume set LNCS 3102/3103 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Genetic and Evoluti... more The two volume set LNCS 3102/3103 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO 2004, held in Seattle, WA, USA, in June 2004. The 230 revised full papers and 104 poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 460 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on artificial life, adaptive behavior, agents, and ant colony optimization; artificial immune systems, biological applications; coevolution; evolutionary robotics; evolution strategies ...

2010 10th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 2010

The human body was not designed by engineers and the way in which it is built poses enormous cont... more The human body was not designed by engineers and the way in which it is built poses enormous control problems. Its complexity challenges the ability of classical control theory to explain human movement as well as the development of human motor skills. It is our working hypothesis that the engineering paradigm for building robots places severe limitations on the kinds of interactions such robots can engage in, on the knowledge they can acquire of their environment, and therefore on the nature of their cognitive engagement with the environment. This paper describes the design of an anthropomimetic humanoid upper torso, ECCE1, built in the context of the ECCEROBOT project. The goal of the project is to use this platform to test hypotheses about human motion as well as to compare its performance with that of humans, whether at the mechanical, behavioural or cognitive level.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2007

ABSTRACT The human body has a complex skeleton, giving a very high number of degrees of freedom, ... more ABSTRACT The human body has a complex skeleton, giving a very high number of degrees of freedom, and is actuated by a large number of elastic elements – muscles and tendons. As a consequence, it has extremely challenging dynamics. Conventional humanoid robots use reduced degrees of freedom and traditional stiff actuators, and so fail to capture or exploit the important dynamic aspects of the human body. It has proved possible to build robots that mimic the human body – anthropomimetic or ‘musculo-skeletal’ robots – but the control of such robots will require very different methods from those used in existing humanoid robots. This paper reports the results of a preliminary investigation of the control problems using SIMNOS, a physics-based model of the anthropomimetic robot CRONOS. The transient and steady state effects of load changes on two simple feedforward methods for maintaining arm posture are assessed. The addition of a feedback controller reduces the steady state effects considerably, but still shows oscillatory transient effects. However, by combining this feedback controller with a velocity-limiting feedforward element, it proves possible to make smooth and reasonably accurate changes of posture under conditions of constant load.

The possible role of the self-model in consciousness has received much attention recently, partic... more The possible role of the self-model in consciousness has received much attention recently, particularly in connection with the theories of Metzinger and Damasio [4]. However, a self-model can also play a variety of useful functional roles within a system; indeed, it may well be that the evolutionary history of the self-model at the core of consciousness may have begun in the context of one of these functional roles. This paper explores the use of a self-model in the plausible candidate context of providing better action selection through the imagination and evaluation of possible self-world interactions; we call this 'functional imagination'.

Microprocessors and Microsystems, Mar 20, 2000

This paper describes a communications and control infrastructure for distributed mobile robotics,... more This paper describes a communications and control infrastructure for distributed mobile robotics, which makes use of wireless local area network (WLAN) technology and Internet Protocols (IPs). The use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software components, and protocols, results in a powerful platform for conducting experiments into collective or co-operative robotics. Standard Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) compatible applications programming interfaces (APIs) allow for rapid and ...

Artificial Life, Nov 27, 2012

Anthropomimetic robotics differs from conventional approaches by capitalizing on the replication ... more Anthropomimetic robotics differs from conventional approaches by capitalizing on the replication of the inner structures of the human body, such as muscles, tendons, bones, and joints. Here we present our results of more than three years of research in constructing, simulating, and, most importantly, controlling anthropomimetic robots. We manufactured four physical torsos, each more complex than its predecessor, and developed the tools required to simulate their behavior. Furthermore, six different control approaches, inspired by ...

Proceedings of …, 2003

In this paper we describe a simple physical test-bed, developed to allow practical experimentatio... more In this paper we describe a simple physical test-bed, developed to allow practical experimentation in the use of Decentralised Data Function (DDF) in sensor-to-shooter applications. Running DDF over an ad hoc network of distributed sensors produces target location information. This is ...

Artificial Life, 2000

In this paper we examine the effects of the emergence of a new replicator, memes, on the evolutio... more In this paper we examine the effects of the emergence of a new replicator, memes, on the evolution of a pre-existing replicator, genes. Using a version of the NKCS model we examine the effects of increasing the rate of meme evolution in relation to the rate of gene evolution, for various degrees of interdependence between the two replicators. That is, the effects of memes' (suggested) more rapid rate of evolution in comparison to that of genes is investigated using a tunable model of coevolution. It is found that, for almost any degree of interdependence between the two replicators, as the rate of meme evolution increases, a phase transition-like dynamic occurs under which memes have a significantly detrimental effect on the evolution of genes, quickly resulting in the cessation of effective gene evolution. Conversely, the memes experience a sharp increase in benefit from increasing their rate of evolution. We then examine the effects of enabling genes to reduce the percentage of gene-detrimental evolutionary steps taken by memes. Here a critical region emerges as the comparative rate of meme evolution increases, such that if genes cannot effectively select memes a high percentage of the time, they suffer from meme evolution as if they had almost no selective capability.

Kybernetes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the origins, members, activities, and influenc... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the origins, members, activities, and influence of the Ratio Club, a British cybernetic dining club that met between 1949 and 1958. Although its membership included some of the best known British cyberneticists, such as Grey Walter and Ross Ashby, along with pioneering scientists such as Alan Turing, the club is poorly documented, and its significance is difficult to establish from published sources. Design/methodology/approach – The approach involved the consultation and analysis of unpublished material in both private and public archives in the UK and the USA, coupled with interviews with surviving members, guests, and contemporaries. Findings – The Ratio Club grew out of a distinctively British strand of cybernetic activity that was mainly fuelled by the deployment of biologists to engineering activities during the Second World War. It was also strongly influenced by the approach of the psychologist Kenneth Craik. Although member...

IEEE Transactions on Rehabilitation Engineering, 1995

Abstract-An important factor in the acceptance of a prosthesis is the ease with which the wearer ... more Abstract-An important factor in the acceptance of a prosthesis is the ease with which the wearer can operate the device. Mul-tiple degrees of freedom of a prosthesis are difficult to control independently and require a high level of concentration. If the control is arranged in a hierarchical ...

2007 IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life, 2007

In this paper we try to develop predictors in order to drive a simulated car around a track witho... more In this paper we try to develop predictors in order to drive a simulated car around a track without the most recent sensor data. In order to test the predictive abilities of our car we developed two experiments: one where the sensor data was interrupted for a certain time and another where the sensor data is constantly delayed by a certain amount. The predictors are based on neural networks, and we compare backpropagation and evolutionary computation as methods of training these. In the end we found that predictors with good driving performance do not sample the set of predictors which minimize the prediction error in the sensors.

Neurocomputing, 2009

Imagination can be defined broadly as the manipulation of information that is not directly availa... more Imagination can be defined broadly as the manipulation of information that is not directly available to an agent's sensors. However, the topic of imagination raises representational, physiological, and phenomenological issues that cannot be tackled easily without using the body as a reference point. Within this framework, we define functional imagination as the mechanism that allows an embodied agent to simulate its own actions and their sensory consequences internally, and to extract behavioural benefits from doing so. In this paper, we present five necessary and sufficient requirements for the implementation of functional imagination, as well as a minimal architecture that meets all these criteria. We also present a taxonomy for categorising possible architectures according to their main attributes. Finally, we describe experiments with some simple architectures designed using these principles and implemented on simulated and real robots, including an extremely complex anthropomimetic humanoid.

As the MAV (Micro or Miniature Aerial Vehicles) field matures, we expect to see that the platform... more As the MAV (Micro or Miniature Aerial Vehicles) field matures, we expect to see that the platform's degree of autonomy, the information exchange, and the coordination with other manned and unmanned actors, will become at least as crucial as its aerodynamic design. The project described in this paper explores some aspects of a particularly exciting possible avenue of development: an

Proceedings 2005 IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, 2005. SIS 2005., 2005

Genetic programming (GP) is used to create fitness landscapes which highlight strengths and weakn... more Genetic programming (GP) is used to create fitness landscapes which highlight strengths and weaknesses of different types of PSO and to contrast population-based swarm approaches with non stochastic gradient followers (i.e. hill climbers). These automatically generated benchmark problems yield insights into the operation of PSOs, illustrate benefits and drawbacks of different population sizes and constriction (friction) coefficients, and reveal new swarm phenomena such as deception and the exploration/exploitation tradeoff. The method could be applied to any type of optimizer.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005

Particle Swarm Optimisers (PSOs) search using a set of interacting particles flying over the fitn... more Particle Swarm Optimisers (PSOs) search using a set of interacting particles flying over the fitness landscape. These are typically controlled by forces that encourage each particle to fly back both towards the best point sampled by it and towards the swarm's best. Here we explore the possibility of evolving optimal force generating equations to control the particles in a PSO using genetic programming.

2006 IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation, 2006

The problem of the automatic development of controllers for vehicles for which the exact characte... more The problem of the automatic development of controllers for vehicles for which the exact characteristics are not known is considered in the context of miniature helicopter flocking. A methodology is proposed in which neural network based controllers are evolved in a simulation using a dynamic model qualitatively similar to the physical helicopter. Several network architectures and evolutionary sequences are investigated, and two approaches are found that can evolve very competitive controllers. The division of the neural network into modules and of the task into incremental steps seems to be a precondition for success, and we analyse why this might be so.

Proceedings 2005 IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, 2005. SIS 2005., 2005

At one time or another we have all been impressed by the sheer agility of a flock of starlings fl... more At one time or another we have all been impressed by the sheer agility of a flock of starlings flying in a city square at dusk – wheeling and manoeuvring so swiftly and precisely as to create the illusion of a single and very superior controlling intelligence. Artificial flock and swarm ...

Proceedings of the 9th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation - GECCO '07, 2007

The problem of how to acquire a model of a physical robot, which is fit for evolution of controll... more The problem of how to acquire a model of a physical robot, which is fit for evolution of controllers that can subsequently be used to control that robot, is considered in the context of racing a radio-controlled toy car around a randomised track. Several modelling techniques are compared, and the specific properties of the acquired models that influence the quality of the evolved controller are discussed. As we aim to minimise the amount of domain knowledge used, we further investigate the relation between the assumptions about the modelled system made by particular modelling techniques and the suitability of the acquired models as bases for controller evolution. We find that none of the models acquired is good enough on its own, and that a key to evolving robust behaviour is to evaluate controllers simultaneously on multiple models during evolution. Examples of successfully evolved racing control for the physical car are analysed.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004

The two volume set LNCS 3102/3103 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Genetic and Evoluti... more The two volume set LNCS 3102/3103 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO 2004, held in Seattle, WA, USA, in June 2004. The 230 revised full papers and 104 poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 460 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on artificial life, adaptive behavior, agents, and ant colony optimization; artificial immune systems, biological applications; coevolution; evolutionary robotics; evolution strategies ...

2010 10th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 2010

The human body was not designed by engineers and the way in which it is built poses enormous cont... more The human body was not designed by engineers and the way in which it is built poses enormous control problems. Its complexity challenges the ability of classical control theory to explain human movement as well as the development of human motor skills. It is our working hypothesis that the engineering paradigm for building robots places severe limitations on the kinds of interactions such robots can engage in, on the knowledge they can acquire of their environment, and therefore on the nature of their cognitive engagement with the environment. This paper describes the design of an anthropomimetic humanoid upper torso, ECCE1, built in the context of the ECCEROBOT project. The goal of the project is to use this platform to test hypotheses about human motion as well as to compare its performance with that of humans, whether at the mechanical, behavioural or cognitive level.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2007

ABSTRACT The human body has a complex skeleton, giving a very high number of degrees of freedom, ... more ABSTRACT The human body has a complex skeleton, giving a very high number of degrees of freedom, and is actuated by a large number of elastic elements – muscles and tendons. As a consequence, it has extremely challenging dynamics. Conventional humanoid robots use reduced degrees of freedom and traditional stiff actuators, and so fail to capture or exploit the important dynamic aspects of the human body. It has proved possible to build robots that mimic the human body – anthropomimetic or ‘musculo-skeletal’ robots – but the control of such robots will require very different methods from those used in existing humanoid robots. This paper reports the results of a preliminary investigation of the control problems using SIMNOS, a physics-based model of the anthropomimetic robot CRONOS. The transient and steady state effects of load changes on two simple feedforward methods for maintaining arm posture are assessed. The addition of a feedback controller reduces the steady state effects considerably, but still shows oscillatory transient effects. However, by combining this feedback controller with a velocity-limiting feedforward element, it proves possible to make smooth and reasonably accurate changes of posture under conditions of constant load.

The possible role of the self-model in consciousness has received much attention recently, partic... more The possible role of the self-model in consciousness has received much attention recently, particularly in connection with the theories of Metzinger and Damasio [4]. However, a self-model can also play a variety of useful functional roles within a system; indeed, it may well be that the evolutionary history of the self-model at the core of consciousness may have begun in the context of one of these functional roles. This paper explores the use of a self-model in the plausible candidate context of providing better action selection through the imagination and evaluation of possible self-world interactions; we call this 'functional imagination'.

Microprocessors and Microsystems, Mar 20, 2000

This paper describes a communications and control infrastructure for distributed mobile robotics,... more This paper describes a communications and control infrastructure for distributed mobile robotics, which makes use of wireless local area network (WLAN) technology and Internet Protocols (IPs). The use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software components, and protocols, results in a powerful platform for conducting experiments into collective or co-operative robotics. Standard Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) compatible applications programming interfaces (APIs) allow for rapid and ...

Artificial Life, Nov 27, 2012

Anthropomimetic robotics differs from conventional approaches by capitalizing on the replication ... more Anthropomimetic robotics differs from conventional approaches by capitalizing on the replication of the inner structures of the human body, such as muscles, tendons, bones, and joints. Here we present our results of more than three years of research in constructing, simulating, and, most importantly, controlling anthropomimetic robots. We manufactured four physical torsos, each more complex than its predecessor, and developed the tools required to simulate their behavior. Furthermore, six different control approaches, inspired by ...

Proceedings of …, 2003

In this paper we describe a simple physical test-bed, developed to allow practical experimentatio... more In this paper we describe a simple physical test-bed, developed to allow practical experimentation in the use of Decentralised Data Function (DDF) in sensor-to-shooter applications. Running DDF over an ad hoc network of distributed sensors produces target location information. This is ...

Artificial Life, 2000

In this paper we examine the effects of the emergence of a new replicator, memes, on the evolutio... more In this paper we examine the effects of the emergence of a new replicator, memes, on the evolution of a pre-existing replicator, genes. Using a version of the NKCS model we examine the effects of increasing the rate of meme evolution in relation to the rate of gene evolution, for various degrees of interdependence between the two replicators. That is, the effects of memes' (suggested) more rapid rate of evolution in comparison to that of genes is investigated using a tunable model of coevolution. It is found that, for almost any degree of interdependence between the two replicators, as the rate of meme evolution increases, a phase transition-like dynamic occurs under which memes have a significantly detrimental effect on the evolution of genes, quickly resulting in the cessation of effective gene evolution. Conversely, the memes experience a sharp increase in benefit from increasing their rate of evolution. We then examine the effects of enabling genes to reduce the percentage of gene-detrimental evolutionary steps taken by memes. Here a critical region emerges as the comparative rate of meme evolution increases, such that if genes cannot effectively select memes a high percentage of the time, they suffer from meme evolution as if they had almost no selective capability.