Cognitive Systems

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GlassesThere are a number of fundamental differences between human and artificial sensors. It goes without saying that most microphones bear little resemblance to the human ear. Although a microphone can record a greater range of sound with impressive accuracy, it cannot accomplish some of the simplest tasks for humans, such as distinguishing foreground from background or ignoring repetitive, predictable sounds.

The Cognitive Systems Team is a multi-disciplinary team of researchers that works on bridging the gap between human and artificial sensors. Their goal is to create sensors that have a degree of cognitivity; not only to arrive at greater understanding of human cognition, but to bring the capabilities of artificial sensors a step closer to human ones.

INCAS³ provides a collaborative environment in which experts in the fields of linguistics and psychology, cognitive sciences, automatic pattern recognition, and physics can accomplish this goal.

Research

The Cognitive Systems Team performs research into how humans perceive their environment to create techniques and models for artificial information processing that possess a degree of cognitivity.

As language is an essential tool in investigating human perception, one of the focus points of the group is to develop a methodology for correlating descriptions of human sensory experience with physical characteristics that can be used in automatic processing. The output of signal processing (a model of human processing insofar as it uses biologically-inspired models like that of the human peripheral auditory system) is classified in terms of descriptions of sensory experience using automatic pattern recognition techniques.

The Cognitive Systems Team aims to create systems that can function without artificial constraints. Real-world data, fieldwork, and the maximization of the ecological validity of experiments are therefore essential.

Sample Project

The largest project in which the Cognitive Systems Team is involved is Sensor City. In this project, a grid of over a hundred microphones is placed in the Dutch city of Assen. Using the data from these loci, the group intends to automatically analyze the sound to provide a “sound map” which shows how the sonic environment is likely experienced by a given individual in different parts of the city. The goal of Sensor City is to create artificial sensors capable of predicting the human evaluation of a sonic environment.