CALL FOR PAPERS 

REMEMBERING WHO WE ARE – HUMAN MEMORY FOR ARTIFICIAL AGENTS 

A one day symposium on 29th March 2010 
In conjunction with the AISB 2010 Convention 
(http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb10/AISB2010.html) 
De Montfort University, Leicester 
The symposium is supported by the European FP7 Project LIREC 
(http://www.lirec.eu/) 

Memory gives us identity, shapes our personality and drives our 
reactions to different situations in life. We actively create 
expectations, track the fulfilment of these expectations and 
dynamically modify our memory when new experiences demand it. Yet up 
to date, many important social aspects of human memory (for instance, 
emotional memory and episodic memory) to artificial intelligent agents 
have not been given much attention. The challenge might lie in the 
amount of memories one can have in a life time. Take a narrative agent 
for example, how can we generate a lifetime’s worth of memories for 
this agent? Can we easily record human experiences for this purpose? 
What trust and privacy issues will this entail? On the other hand, 
without this type of memory, can the agent generate believable life 
stories given that it is what colors our lives in retrospect? For an 
agent that continuously interacts with users or other agents, how can 
we design it with the capability to generate memories worth 
remembering in its lifetime? How can the agent record experiences of 
others during interaction? Can the agent maintain its relationship 
with others without any information about its past experiences with 
them? 

Artificial agent researchers have been constantly coming up with 
computational cognitive models inspired by the human brain to create 
characters that are more natural, believable and behave in human 
plausible ways. However, memory components in these models are usually 
oversimplified. Memory components which have been widely accepted and 
modelled are the long-term memory including procedural and declarative 
memories, the short-term memory and the sensory memory. What about the 
more ‘socially-aware’ memory which allows us to be effectively 
involved in social interactions and which fundamentally supports the 
creation of our life stories including the significance of events and 
their emotional impact? It is important to review artificial agents 
without this kind of memory particularly those designed for social 
interactions, and reflect on the effects of this shortcoming. 
Additionally, many existing models do not take into consideration the 
bio-mechanisms of human memory operations such as those involved in 
retrieval and forgetting processes. The most commonly adopted approach 
to forgetting is decay but the human brain performs other processes 
such as generalisation, reconstruction and repression to list a few. 

This symposium offers an opportunity for interdisciplinary discussions 
on human-like memory for artificial agents including organisational 
structures and mechanisms. We hope to bring together memory 
researchers, psychologists, computer scientists and neurologists to 
discuss issues on memory modelling, memory data collection and 
application to achieve a better understanding of which, when and how 
human-like memory can contribute to artificial agents modelling. 

Topics of interest include but are not limited to: 

* Role of memory in artificial agents 
* Type of memory and application 
* Memory and emotion modelling 
* Human-agent/human-robot interaction history 
* Effective memory data collection 
* Privacy issues related to data collection 
* Bio-inspiration to memory modelling 
* Memory mechanisms for encoding, storage and retrieval 
* Memory influence on reasoning and decision-making 
* Modelling forgetting in episodic memory 
* Ethological aspects of memory 
* Spatial memory 

Submission 

We are seeking submissions of original papers (up to 8 pages) that fit 
well with the symposium theme and topics. Papers should be submitted 
through the EasyChair system 
(http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rwwa10). You will have to 
register with EasyChair if you do not already have an account. Please 
submit your paper in PDF format (according to the AISB 2010 formatting 
guidelines - templates available on the AISB 2010 
convention website). All submissions will be peer reviewed. Authors of 
accepted contributions will be asked to prepare the final versions (up 
to 8 pages) for inclusion in the symposium proceedings. At least one 
author of each accepted paper will be required to register and attend 
the symposium to present their work. 

Important Dates 

* 22nd January 2010: Submission deadline of full-length paper 
* 15th February 2010: Notification for paper acceptance 
* 1st March 2010: Submission of camera-ready final papers 
* 29th March 2010: Symposium 

Program Committee 

Cyril Brom, Charles University Prague 
Sibylle Enz, University of Bamberg 
Stan Franklin, The University of Memphis 
Wan Ching Ho, University of Hertfordshire (co-chair) 
Mei Yii Lim, Heriot-Watt University (co-chair) 
Andrew Nuxoll, University of Portland 
Alexei Samsonovich, George Mason University 
Holger Schultheis, University of Bremen 
Dan Tecuci, University of Texas 
Patricia A. Vargas, Heriot-Watt University 

Official Website 
http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~myl/AISBRWWA.html 

Contact 

Dr. Mei Yii Lim 
Computer Science, Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, EH14 4AS, UK 
Email: M.Lim@hw.ac.uk 
Homepage: http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~myl/ 
Tel: (44) 131 4514162 
Fax: (44) 131 4513327 

Dr. Wan Ching Ho 
STRI, University of Hertfordshire, 
College Lane, Hatfield, AL10 9AB, UK 
Email: W.C.Ho@herts.ac.uk 
Homepage: http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqwch/ 
Tel: (44) 170 7285111 
Fax: (44) 170 7284185