Davide Marocco, Ph.D.




Researcher


Email:
davide.marocco [at] istc.cnr.it

Address:
Institute of Cognitive Science and Technologies
National Research Council
Via San Martino della Battaglia, 44
00185 Roma

Phones:
Office: +39.06.44.595.231
Teaching: :
Sistemi di Intelligenza Artificiale
Corso di Laurea in Scienze e Tecniche Psicologiche.
AVVISO: Il sito www.itrobotics.it non è più attivo.



FIELDS OF INTEREST

  • Evolutionary Robotics


  • Embodied Cognition and Active Perception


  • Evolution of communication and language with evolutionary robotics techniques

EDUCATION AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

  • Current - Researcher within the project "ECAgents" (Founded by European Union) at Laboratory of Artificial Life and Robotics, Institute of Cognitive Science and Technologies (National Research Council, Rome)

  • February 2005 - Visiting Researcher at the Graduate School of Arts and Science, University of Tokyo, Japan

  • January, May 2004 - Research Assistant within the project "Robocare" (Italian Project) at Laboratory of Artificial Life and Robotics, Institute of Cognitive Science and Technologies (National Research Council, Rome)

  • January 2004 - Ph.D., Thesis on: The Grounding of Language on cognitive and sensorimotor categories, University of Calabria, Italy

  • June, August 2003 - Visiting Student at the Centre for Neural and Adaptive Systems, School of Computing (University of Plymouth, Plymouth - UK) working with Prof. Angelo Cangelosi

  • February, July 2002 - Visiting Student at the Centre for Neural and Adaptive Systems, School of Computing (University of Plymouth, Plymouth - UK) working with Prof. Angelo Cangelosi

  • July, September 2001 - Visiting Student at the Institute of Robotic Systems, Department of Micro-engineering (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne) working with Prof. Dario Floreano

  • 1999/2000 - Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (National Reserch Council, Rome) working with Prof. Stefano Nolfi

  • 1999 - Laurea (Master Degree) in Phylosophy (with distinction), Thesis on: Artificial life simulations, University of Catania, Italy

PUBLICATIONS

    Journals

  • Marocco, D., Nolfi, S. (In press), Emergence of Communication in Embodied Agents Evolved for the Ability to Solve a Collective Navigation Problem, Connection Sciences.

  • Floreano, D., Kato, T., Marocco, D., Sauser, E., (2004), Co-evolution of Active Vision and Feature Selection, Biological Cybernetics, 90(3), 218-228, Springer-Verlag. Preprint [pdf]. The original publication is available at springerlink.com.

    Demo: Online Evolution (6.1 MB - Quick Time)


  • Marocco, D., Cangelosi, A., Nolfi, S. (2003), Evolutionary robotics experiments on the evolution of language. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London - A, 361: 2397-2421. Preprint [pdf]

  • Nolfi, S., and Marocco, D. (2002), Evolving Robots Able to Visually Discriminate Between Objects with Different Size, International Journal of Robotics and Automation, (17) 4:163-170 Acta Press. Preprint [pdf]

  • Nolfi, S., and Marocco, D. (2001), Evolving Robots Able To Integrate Sensory-Motor Information Over Time, Theory in Biosciences, 120: 1-24, Urban & Fischer Verlag. Preprint [pdf]

    Book chapters

  • Marocco, D., Nolfi, S. (In press), Communication in Natural and Artificial Organisms: Experiments in Evolutionary Robotics. In C. Lyon, C.L. Nehaniv, A. Cangelosi (Eds.), Emergence of Communication and Language. Springer Verlag.

  • Cangelosi A., Riga T., Giolito B. & Marocco D. (2005). The emergence of language in grounded adaptive agents and robots. In K. Hasida & K. Nitta (Eds.), New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence: Joint Proceeding of the 17th and 18th Annual Conferences of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence. LNCS, Springer Verlag. Preprint [pdf]

  • Marocco, D., Nolfi, S. (2005), Emergence of Communication in Embodied Agents: Co-Adapting Communicative and Non-Communicative Behaviours. In A. Cangelosi et al.(Eds.), Modeling language, cognition and action: Proceedings of the 9th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop. Singapore: World Scientific. Preprint [pdf]

  • Nolfi, S., Baldassarre, G., Marocco, D. (2003), The importance of viewing cognition as the result of emergent processes occurring at different time scales. In K. Murase & T. Asakura (Eds.) Dynamic Systems Approach for Embodiment and Sociality, International Series on Advanced Intelligence, Volume 6, Magill, Australia: Advanced Knowledge International Press. pp 43-56. Preprint [pdf]

  • Cangelosi, A., Marocco, D., Bilotta, E., P.A., Bertacchini (2003), Studying the evolution of language: Simulation and robotic approaches, In C. Usai & M. Zanobini (a cura di), Libro in onore di Prof. M.T. Bozzo (in Italian).

  • Nolfi, S.,and Marocco, D. (2002), Evolving Robots Able To Integrate Sensory-Motor Information Over Time, In R., Duro, J., Santos, and M., Graña (Eds.) Biologically Inspired Robot Behavior Engineering, Berlino, Springer-Verlag. Preprint [pdf]

    Peer-reviewed collection papers

  • Marocco, D., Nolfi, S. (In press), Origins of communication in evolving robots, In Nolfi S., Baldassarre G., Calabretta R., Marocco D., Parisi D., Hallam J., Miglino, O., Meyer J-A (Eds.), From animals to animats 9: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour, LNAI. Volume 4095. Berlin, Germany: Springer Verlag.

  • Marocco, D., Nolfi, S. (2006), Self-Organization of Communication in Evolving Robots, In Rocha L. M. et al. (eds), Proceeding of the Tenth International Conference on Artificial Life, ALifeX. Boomington: MIT Press, pp. 199-205. Preprint [pdf]

  • Marocco, D., Nolfi, S. (2006), Emergence of Communication in Teams of Embodied and Situated Agents. In A., Cangelosi, A.D.M., Smith, K. Smith (Eds.), The Evolution of Language. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference. Singapore: World Scientific, pp. 198-205. Preprint [pdf]

  • Stuart, L.J., Marocco, D., Cangelosi, A., (2005), Information Visualization for Knowledge Extraction in Neural Networks. ICANN (2) 2005: 515-520

  • Nolfi, S., Baldassarre, G., Marocco, D. (2002), The importance of viewing cognition as the result of emergent processes occurring at different time scales. In T. Asakura and K. Murase (Eds.), Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Homan and Artificial Intelligence Systems. Fukui, Japan: Fukui University Press.

  • Marocco, D., Cangelosi, A., Nolfi, S. (2002), The Role of Social and Cognitive Factors in the Emergence of Communication: Experiments in Evolutionary Robotics, Proceedings of the EPSRC/BBSRC International Workshop "Biologically-Inspired Robotics - The Legacy of W. Grey Walter" , Bristol. Preprint [pdf]

  • Nolfi, S., and Marocco, D. (2002), Active Perception: A Sensorimotor Account of Object Categorization, In B. Hallam, D. Floreano, J. Hallam, G. Hayes and J.-A. Meyer (Eds.), From animals to animats 7 - The Seventh International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, The MIT Press. Preprint [pdf]

  • Marocco, D., and Floreano, D. (2002), Active Vision and Feature Selection in Evolutionary Behavioral Systems, In B. Hallam, D. Floreano, J. Hallam, G. Hayes and J.-A. Meyer (Eds.), From animals to animats 7 - The Seventh International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, The MIT Press. Preprint [pdf]

  • Nolfi, S., Marocco, D. (2000), Evolving visually-guided robots able to discriminate between different landmarks. In J-A Meyer, A. Berthoz, D. Floreano, H.L. Roitblat, and S.W. Wilson (Eds.) From Animals to Animats 6. Proceedings of the VI International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 413-419. Preprint [pdf]

  • Marocco, D., Miglino, O., and Walker, R. (2000), Do it with rhytm - how internal clocks can simplify life in artificial and biological organisms, In R. Buccheri, V. Di Gesù, M. Saniga (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Interdisciplinary Workshop on "Studies on the Structure of Time: from Physics to Psycho(patho)logy", Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.

    Published Abstracts

  • Marocco, D., Nolfi, S. (2005), Emergenza della comunicazione in robot mobili, Atti del II Workshop Italiano di Vita Artificiale, Roma (in Italian).

  • Cangelosi, A., Riga, T., Giolito, B. & Marocco, D. (2004), Language emergence and grounding in sensorimotor agents and robots. First International Workshop on Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Communication, May 31- Jun 1 2004, Kanazawa Japan. Preprint [pdf]

  • Marocco D., Nolfi S. (2004). Evolution of Communication in a Team of Autonomous Robots. 9th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop, NCPW9. Plymouth (UK), September 2004.

  • Marocco D., Cangelosi A. (2004). Evolutionary robotics experiments on the emergence of communication. 5th International Conference on the Evolution of Language. Leipzig, March 2004.

  • Marocco, D., Stuart E.J., Cangelosi A. (2003), Tecniche di visualizzazione in vita artificiale: Il metodo delle coordinate parallele, Atti del I Workshop Italiano di Vita Artificiale, Arcavacara di Rende (CS) (in Italian).

  • Marocco, D., Nolfi, S. (2003), Percezione attiva: strategie senso-motorie per la discriminazione di oggetti, Atti del I Workshop Italiano di Vita Artificiale, Arcavacara di Rende (CS) (in Italian).

  • Marocco, D., Cangelosi, A., Nolfi S. (2002), Evoluzione di Abilità cognitive e linguistiche in modelli neuro-robotici, Atti del Congresso Nazionale della Sezione di Psicologia Sperimentale, Bellaria-Rimini (in Italian).

  • Marocco, D., Nolfi, S., Bilotta, E. (2001), Strategie senso-motorie nella discriminazione di oggetti di differenti dimensioni. Un modello neuro-robotico, Atti del Congresso Nazionale della Sezione di Psicologia Sperimentale (in Italian).

    PhD Thesis

  • Marocco, D. (2004), Il fondamento del linguaggio su categorie cognitive e sensomotorie. Esperimenti di robotica evolutiva, Università della Calabria (in Italian). [pdf]