Abstract

This is a contribution to construction of a research roadmap for future cognitive systems, including intelligent robots, in the context of the euCognition network, and UKCRC Grand Challenge 5: Architecture of Brain and Mind. A meeting on the euCognition roadmap project was held at Munich Airport on 11th Jan 2007. This document was in part a response to discussions at that meeting. An explanation of why specifying requirements is a hard problem, and why it needs to be done, along with some suggestions for making progress, can be found in this presentation: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cosy/papers/#pr0701 "What's a Research Roadmap For? Why do we need one? How can we produce one?" Working on that presentation made me realise that certain deceptively familiar words and phrases frequently used in this context (e.g. "robust". "flexible", "autonomous") appear not to need explanation because everyone understands them, whereas in fact they have obscure semantics that needs to be elucidated. Only then can we understand what the implications are for research targets. In particular, they need explanation and analysis if they are to be used to specify requirements and research goals, especially for publicly funded projects. First draft analyses are presented here. In the long term I would like to expand and clarify those analyses, and to provide many different examples to illustrate the points made. This will probably have to be a collaborative research activity.