EN FR
EN FR


Section: New Results

Highlights of the Year

PY. Oudeyer and M. Lopes, together with J. Gottlieb (Univ. Columbia, NY) organized the first International Symposium on Neurocuriosity symposium on Information Seeking, Curiosity and Attention, pioneering a gathering of world experts on curiosity from developmental psychology, neuroscience, ethology and computational modelling (see https://openlab-flowers.inria.fr/t/first-interdisciplinary-symposium-on-information-seeking-curiosity-and-attention/21 ). This was achieved in the context of associated team Neurocuriosity with the cognitive neuroscience lab of J. Gottlieb at Univ. Columbia, NY, US. The first results investigating predictions of theoretical formal models of curiosity on human exploration were also published [25] .

O. Mangin obtained the Best thesis poster from Bordeaux doctoral school of mathematics and computer science, for his PhD thesis "The Emergence of Multimodal Concepts: From Perceptual Motion Primitives to Grounded Acoustic Words" [24] .

The team, in collaboration with Inaki Iturrate and Luis Montesano, published major results on calibration-free brain-computer interface methods, where incremental machine learning algorithms are used to remove the phase of calibration for an important family of use contexts [44] [45] .

In october 2014, the team announced the release of a new version of the Poppy Project platform, dedicated in particular to the use of tools for creating and programming interactive robots in Education and Art. This platform, which is a result of research on the role of morphology in skill acquisition within ERC project Explorers, was selected as finalist for the Global Fab Awards 2014 (https://www.fab10.org/en/awards ) which select the best worldwide projects in the Makers ecosystem. It was also presented in major international press and media (https://www.poppy-project.org/in-the-press/ ), in multiple hackatons and demos, in particular at the major international conference LeWeb (https://www.poppy-project.org/social-life/ , and its video on the web was seen 125k times. Poppy Project was presented at Elysée, during a French Tech event, to François Hollande (http://www.inria.fr/centre/bordeaux/actualites/poppy-le-robot-humanoide-a-l-elysee ), and in Bordeaux to Axelle Lemaire. Web site: http://www.poppy-project.org

The Flowers team made major achievements in diffusing science and technology towards the general public. The team developped the IniRobot pedagogical kit, for the discovery of computer science and robotics in primary schools. The kit was first developped and evaluated in schools, in collaboration with a group of teachers, and then began to be largely disseminated and used in september 2014 to schools in Talence, Bordeaux, Lormont, and Lille. A dedicated web site has been created, allowing all users and contributors to share their experiences with the kit: https://dm1r.inria.fr/c/kits-pedagogiques/inirobot . PY. Oudeyer was invited to give a TedX talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP8i435ztwE , video viewed by more than 9000 people), and was interviewed and invited to talk about our research on major media channels (e.g. Le Monde, Les Echos, France Inter, see http://www.pyoudeyer.com/press/ ).