The Emergence of Artificial Culture in Robotic Societies

This was the first of a series of workshops arranged by the ‘Creativity from an Interdisciplinary Perspective’ project led by Dr Robin Durie and funded by Bridging the Gaps. 
 
The workshops aim to provide a range of introductions to this research programme, the purpose of which is to explore the relations between creativity as it is understood in the arts and humanities, creativity as a mental process, and creativity as a phenomenon occurring within processes of information generation in mathematical and biological systems.

This first workshop featured work presented by members of the EPSRC-funded project "The Emergence of Artificial Culture in Robotic Societies". This project was developed during an EPSRC Sandpit on Emergence, and has a richly interdisciplinary project team led by Professor Alan Winfield from Bristol Robotics Laboratory.

Professor Winfield gave a fascinating presentation about the project with film of the robots in action, which stimulated lively discussion about the project's experiments. The workshop also provided an opportunity to reflect on the practicalities of developing a genuinely interdisciplinary project between both science and non-science disciplines, how interdisciplinary research questions can be formulated, and how interdisciplinary collaboration can be sustained over the life of a long research project. At the same time, the research questions and work undertaken within the Artificial Culture project have a strong affinity with the theme of creativity, and provided thought-provoking insights for this research programme.

You can download Alan Winfield's Presentation here.

For more information about either of these projects, please contact Robin Durie