I am Michael Spranger - a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc. based in Tokyo, Japan. My main focus is to build creative, intelligent systems that act autonomously in the real world, and learn and evolve communication systems similar in complexity to human language.
My PhD thesis (ECCAI honorable mention award) has recently been published as an open access book.
You can find out more about me on Google Scholar, LinkedIn, ResearchGate, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, ORCID and Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc.
I do a lot of reviewing for journals, e.g. ALife, Adaptive Behavior, International Journal of Social Robotics, Constructions and Frames, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, IEEE TCDS, IEEE THRI and conferences such as CogSci, IJCAI AAAI, IROS, ECAL, ICDL-EPIROB, Evolang an others. In some cases, e.g. CogSci 2017, I am part of the meta-review process.
Please feel free to get in touch at [first name] . [lastname] @ gmail com.
Recent Activities
- Frontiers Research Topic on Language and Robotics published with deadline in November (2018/11)
- Program committee member of IEA/AEI 2019 (2019/07)
- Co-organizer workshop on Language and Robotics at IROS 2018 Madrid Spain (2018/10)
- Co-author paper on sensorimotor learning accepted at IROS 2018 Madrid Spain (2018/10)
- Invited talk on learning to communicate at Workshop on active vision, attention and learning at IEEE ICDL-EPIROB, Tokyo, Japan (2018/09)
- Associate editor (meta-reviewer) of IEiEE ICDL-EPIROB 2018, Tokyo, Japan (2018/09)
- Session chair language learning at IEiEE ICDL-EPIROB 2018, Tokyo, Japan (2018/09)
- Co-organizer symposium on From fieldwork to modelling: Explaining the variability of linguistic spatial referencing system at ICSC 2018, Rome, Italy (2018/09)
- Co-presenter abstract on causal models in spatial reference studies at ICSC 2018, Rome, Italy (2018/09)
- Program committee member of SemDeep-3 at COLING 2018 (2018/08)
- Program committee Joint Workshop on Linguistic Annotation, Multiword Expressions and Constructions at COLING 2018 (2018/08)
- Program committee member of Nesy18 workshop at HLAI (2018/08)
- Co-author paper on constraint-based machine learning accepted at Nesy18 workshop at HLAI (2018/08)
- Invited lecture on concept grounding in robots at Summer School Concepts in Action: Representation, Learning, and Application (CARLA) in Osnabrueck, Germany (2018/08)
- Invited talk on language and gesture learning in robots at Workshop on “Concepts in Action: Representation, Learning, and Application" (CARLA) in Osnabrueck, Germany (2018/08)
- Co-organizer Joint Workshop on Sharing Autonomy in Human-Robot Interaction at IJCAI/ECAI 2018, Stockholm, Sweden (2018/07)
- Co-organizer tutorial on neural-symbolic computing at IJCAI/ECAI 2018, Stockholm, Sweden (2018/07)
- Program committee member of IJCAI/ECAI 2018 (2018/07)
- Co-organizer tutorial on neural-symbolic computing at IJCNN/WCCI, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2018/07)
- Program committee member of ALIFE 2018 (2018/07)
- Co-organizer EVOSLACE: Workshop on the emergence and evolution of social learning, communication, language and culture in natural and artificial agents at ALIFE 2018, Tokyo, Japan (2018/07)
- Das Fremde wins jury selection price Japan Media Art Festival (2018/07)
- Program committee member of NAACL-HLT 2018 (2018/06)
- Guest editorial board Special Issue on Semantic Deep Learning in Semantic Web Journal (2018)
- Program committee member of Latent Semantics for the Web (LSW) at ACM WWW'18 (2018/04)
- Invited speaker at Dommune radio about AI+Art with Refik Anadol and Ryota Kanai (2018/04)
- Invited speaker at 17th AI Art and Aesthetics Research Meeting "AI-Aesthetics-Art" on 1 April (Sun) at Bigakko Tokyo Japan (2018/04)
- Das Fremde and invited talk at Sónar+D in Hong Kong (2018/03)
- Co-organizer and speaker at Symposium Cognitive Computation Symposium: Thinking Beyond Deep Learning at City, University of London, London, UK (2018/02)
- Program committee member (meta-reviewer) of Cogsci 2018 (2018/02)
- Invited talk at LangRobo seminar on symbol emergence (2018/01)
- NIPS 2017 Long Beach, US for PAI meeting / Sony (2017/12)
- Das Fremde at Gwangju Media Art Festival in Gwangju, Korea (2017/12)
- Das Fremde at Artificial Intelligence Art and Aesthetics exhibition presented at OIST, Okinawa, Japan (2017-11 / 2018-01)
- Invited talk symposium "Meaning/Meaningless and Language" as part of Artificial Intelligence Art and Aesthetics exhibition, OIST, Okinawa, Japan (2017/11)
- Das Fremde at Gotenyama Art+Technology Week (2017/11, interview)
- Program committee member of Hybrid Statistical Semantic Understanding and Emerging Semantics (HSSUES) at ISWC 2017 (2017/10)
- Program committee member of European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL 2017) (2017/09)
- Program committee member of WINKS workshop at JOWO 2017 (2017/09)
- Workshop on language learning at IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2017 (2017/09)
- Paper on language learning and tutoring at IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2017 (2017/09)
- Program committee member of SemDeep-2 at IWCS (2017/09)
- Paper on automated pathway curation accepted at ACL BioNLP (2017/08)
- Program committee member of Workshop on Grounded Language Understanding (GLU 2017) Satellite of Interspeech 2017 (2017/08)
- Program committee member (meta reviewer) of CogSci 2017 (2017/07)
- Program committee member of IEA/AEI 2017 (2017/06)
- Invited participant Dagstuhl seminar on Human-like Neural-Symbolic Computing (2017/05)
- Invited participant Ernst Strüngmann Forum on Interactive Task Learning (2017/05)
- Invited participant Lorentz Center workshop on Perspectives on Developmental Robotics (2017/05)
- Program committee member of SemDeep workshop at ESWC 2017 (2017/05)
- Method Course on Language Learning with Robots at Interdisciplinary College, Guenne, Germany (2017/03)
- Paper accepted at AAAI spring school on Computational Construction Grammar (2017/03)
- Invited to specialist meeting about Universals and Variation in Spatial Referencing across Cultures and Languages in Santa Barbara, US (2016/12)
- Installation Das Fremde in Lausanne (Switzerland) at Les Urbaines (2016/11)
- Installation Das Fremde in Zurich (Switzerland) at the week long Us&Them (2016/11)
- Giving a talk and demo on the language research at Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc. at Sony CSL Paris Open House in Paris, France (2016/10)
- Invited talk on construction learning at the annual meeting of the Japanese Cognitive Linguistics Association (2016/09)
- Co-organizer Workshop on Language Learning at IEEE ICDL-EPIROB (2016/09)
- ATLANTIS Atelier on multi-modal grounded language learning at CAES summer school(2016/09) - this atelier won the best technical atelier price
- Paper on automated pathway curation accepted at ACL BioNLP (2016/08)
- Special section on Computational Models in Language Acquisition published in Interaction Studies (2016/08)
- Special issue on Cognitive Robotics published in Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence (2016/08)
- Paper on robust language processing accepted at IJCAI-16 (2016/07)
- Invited Workshop at 2016 UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference on Synthetic Models of Language Evolution (2016/07)
- Casparo Performance at ICCC 2016 Paris, France (2016/06)
- Invited talk and participation at APRIL ITN Paris Workshop on Foundations in Personal Robotics (2016/05)
- Associate partner in the APRIL project (Applications of Personal Robotics for Interaction and Learning) a Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Industrial Doctorate Innovative Training Network (2016)
- Invited lecture at the 2nd ESSENCE summer school on Evolutionary Semantics (2015/08)
- Attended a workshop at University of Southern California on Action, Vision and Language and their Brain Mechanisms in Evolutionary Relationship (2015/08)
- Paper on incremental learning accepted at RSS Workshop on Model Learning for Human-Robot control (2015/07)
- New paper on Natural Language semantics for robots accepted at IEEE/RSJ IROS 2015(2015/06)
- New paper on SBML/BioPAX conversion accepted at BioNLP Workshop at ACL 2015(2015/06)
- Website is up for the tutorial on Evolutionary Semantics at IJCAI'15 (2015/06)
- New paper on language learning accepted at IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2015 (2015/05)
- Invited member of IEEE AMD Language and Cognition Task Force (2015/04)
- Paper on language learning accepted at IJCAI-15 (2015/04)
- Abstract on Ontogenetic Ritualization accepted at Protolang 4 in Rome, Italy (2015/04)
- Poster on Ontogenetic Ritualization wins poster prize at Tokyo Lectures In Language Evolution (2015/04)
- Workshop on Cognitive Robotics accepted at 2015 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference (RSS) (read more)
- Invited lecture at Interdisciplinary College (IK) 2015 on robots and language evolution (2015/03, read more)
- Published new call for special issue on Computational and Robotics Models of Language Development in Journal of Interaction Studies (2015/01, read more ...)
- Tutorial on Grounded Language Processing accepted for International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2015/01)
- Paper presentation at International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics (ISAROB) on Robot Models of the Cultural Evolution of Language (2015/01)
- Invited talk and participation at CITEC-ABLE workshop on Construction Grammar (2014/12)
- CASPARO opera performance in Leuven (Belgium) as part of the Vesalius year (2014/12)
- Organizer special track on Cognitive Robotics at PRICAI 2014 (2014/12, read more ...)
- Call closed for special issue on Cognitive Robotics in Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence JETAI (2014/12, read more ...)
- Reviewer for Artificial Life Journal (2014/11)
- Paper presentation at IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2014 on Ontogenetic Ritualization (2014/10)
- Published new call for special issue on Cognitive Robotics in Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence JETAI (2014/09, read more ...)
- Invited talk at CogRob 2014 (ECAI 2014) on Evolution of Natural Language Semantics (2014/08)
- Reviewer for PRICAI 2014 (2014/08)
- Call closed for special track on Cognitive Robotics PRICAI 2014 (2014/07, read more ...)
- Reviewer for IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2014 (2014/07)
- Reviewer for International Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems (2014/06)
- Published new call for special track on Cognitive Robotics PRICAI 2014 (2014/05, read more ...)
- Reviewer for Adaptive Behavior (2014/05)
- Paper presentation at 10th International Conference on the Evolution of Language EvolangX (2014/04)
- Workshop presentation at the workshop on Grammaticalization at 10th International Conference on the Evolution of Language EvolangX (2014/03)
- Invited participation and talks at Dagstuhl Seminar on Spatial reference in the Semantic Web and in Robotics (2014/03)
- Reviewer for CogSci 2014 (2014/03)
- Attended IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2013/11)
- Official move from Sony's ITDD R&D division to Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc. (2013/10)
- Invited seminar on Evolutionary semantics at Institut de Recherches Interdisciplinaires et de Développements en Intelligence Artificielle (2013/10)
- Invited talk workshop on Language Development and Robots at University of Amsterdam (2013/10)
- Invited lecture and atelier on Computational Cognitive Semantics at the international Summerschool on Agent-based Models of Creativity (2013/09)
- Organizer workshop on Collective Behaviors and Social Dynamics at 12th European Conference on Artificial Life (2013/09)
- Paper presentation on spatial language evolution at 12th European Conference on Artificial Life (2013/09)
- Paper presentation on spatial language learning at IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2013 (2013/08)
- Paper presentation 27th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence on Evolutionary semantics (2013/07)
- Reviewer for IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2013/04)
- Reviewer for CogSci 2013 (2013/03)
- Invited course lecturer on Computational Cognitive Semantics at Bangor Summer School on Cognitive Linguistics (2013/07)
- CASPARO opera performance in Tokyo (Japan) as part of 25 years Sony Computer Science Laboratories (2014/05)
- CASPARO opera performance in Brussels (Belgium) as part of 50 years A.I. lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (2014/05, see here for a video)
- Seminar on Evolutionary Semantics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology HKUST (2013/03)
- Journal paper on evolving spatial language strategies published in Springer's Künstliche Intelligenz (2013/01)
- Reviewer for 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2012/11)
- ECCAI honorable mention best PhD in 2011 at ECAI 2014 (2012/08)
- Papers published in Springer book on Language Grounding in Robots (2012/07)
- Papers published in John Benjamin book on Experiments in Cultural Language Evolution (2012/07)
- Paper published in Springer LNCS New Directions in Logic, Language, and Computation(2012/06)
- Paper published in John Benjamin book on Design Patterns in Fluid Construction Grammar (2011)