Thursday 31 October 2013

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Swarm Intelligence for Real-World Engineering Optimization"

Aim

Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. Many swarm intelligence based algorithms have been proposed in recent years including particle swarm optimization, artificial bee colony optimization, artificial immune systems, glowworm swarm optimization, intelligent water drops, self-propelled particles, stochastic diffusion search, and etc. The above algorithms have been widely used to solve test functions and benchmark problems and have shown great success. This special session aims to promote the application of the swarm intelligence based algorithms and other meta-heuristics to solving real-world engineering optimization problems.

Scope

Topics of interest may cover, but are not limited to
  • Chemical engineering optimization
  • Examination timetabling problem
  • Structural design optimization
  • Multiple sequence alignment 
  • Truss optimization
  • Production scheduling
  • Production planning
  • Construction site layout optimization
  • Multi-objective design optimization 
  • Nonlinear parameter estimation

Submissions

Papers should be submitted following the instructions at the IEEE WCCI 2014 web site. Please select the main research topic as the Special Session on "Swarm Intelligence for real-world engineering optimization”. Accepted papers will be included and published in the conference proceedings.
Paper submissions:            December 20, 2013
Notification of acceptance:     March 15, 2014
Final paper submission:        April 15, 2014

Information on the format and templates for papers can be found here:
http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper%20Submission.htm

Organizers

Dr. J. J. Liang
Associate Professor, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China
liangjing@zzu.edu.cn

Dr. Quan-Ke Pan
Professor, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China
panquanke@mail.neu.edu.cn

Dr. Yuhui Shi
Professor, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China
Yuhui.Shi@xjtlu.edu.cn

Dr. B. Y. Qu
Associate Professor, Zhongyuan University of Technology, Zhengzhou, China
qby1984@hotmail.com

Wednesday 30 October 2013

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Biologically Inspired Computational Vision"

Aim

Constructive understanding of computational principles of visual information processing, perception and cognition is one of the most fundamental challenges of contemporary science. Deeper insight into biological vision helps to advance intelligent systems research to achieve robust performance similar to biological systems. Biological inspiration indicates that sensory processing, perception, and action are intimately linked at various levels in animal vision. Implementing such integrated principles in artificial systems may help us achieve better, faster and more efficient intelligent systems.

Scope

This session provides an integrated platform to present original ideas, theory, design, and applications of computational vision. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:
  • Theoretical approaches and modeling in computational vision
  • Neuronal mechanisms of visual processing
  • Low level vision and its relationship to biological machinery
  • Artificial learning systems for image and information processing and evidential reasoning for recognition
  • Intelligent search in communications networks
  • Modeling issues in ATM networks, agent-oriented computing architectures
  • Perception of shape, shadows, poses, color and illumination in object recognition
  • Tracking for inferring shapes and 3D motions
  • Active visual perception, attention and robot vision
  • Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies of visual segmentation and perception
  • Application of computational vision in areas of
  • Automated target identification and acquisition systems in defense and industry
  • Biomedical imaging
  • 3D photography
  • Face recognition
  • Learning to segment camouflaged objects
  • Motor actions and robotics
  • Image databases and indexing
  • Hardware implementation of computational vision
  • Any other topics related to biological approaches in computer vision
 

Deadline

The deadline for submissions to this special session is 20 December 2013.

Information for Authors

1) Information on the format and templates for papers can be found here:
http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper%20Submission.htm
2) Papers should be submitted via the IJCNN 2014 paper submission site:
http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/ijcnn2014/upload.php
3) Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list
4) Fill out the input fields, upload the PDF file of your paper and finalize your submission by the deadline
of December 20, 2013.

Organizer

Khan M. Iftekharuddin, PhD
Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Director, Vision Lab
Old Dominion University
kiftekha@odu.edu
http://www.eng.odu.edu/

Call for papers: Special Session for WCCI 2014 "Towards Human-Like Intelligence (THLI)"

The WCCI 2014 Special Session on Towards Human-Like Intelligence (THLI) is organized by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Task Force on Towards Human-Like Intelligence (http://www.mini.pw.edu.pl/~mandziuk/cis_tf_thli/). It is one of a series of events, following the success of 2013 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Human-Like Intelligence (CIHLI) as part of Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI 2013) held in Singapore from 16 to 19 April 2013 and will be followed by 2014 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Human-Like Intelligence as part of SSCI 2014 to be held in Orlando, USA from 9 to 12 December 2014.

The main goal of this special session is to promote and advance research activities related to achieving all facets of human-like intelligence, including learning, reasoning, problem solving, intuition, creativity, insight, emotion, motivation, curiosity, and imagination. The organizers encourage submission of papers describing interdisciplinary research, development, and applications of various Computational Intelligence paradigms, including neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, memetic computing, machine learning, and statistical techniques, towards creating human-like behavior, performance and characteristics.

Topics of Interests

The special session welcomes all papers related to accomplishing human-like intelligence by artificial and/or biologically-inspired systems, models, and algorithms. The topics of interests include but are not limited to:

  • Models and architectures for human-like intelligence
  • Cognitively-plausible architectures and systems
  • Biologically-inspired cognitive models
  • Knowledge representation, learning and reasoning
  • Emulating intuition, creativity, insight, curiosity, personality and imagination
  • Chunk-based representations and the use of geometrical properties in problem solving
  • High level cognition
  • Motivation in autonomous behavior
  • Emotion in human intelligence
  • Machine consciousness
  • Autonomous learning, active learning
  • Transfer learning and multi-task learning

 

Important Dates

December 20, 2013    Paper submission deadline
March 15, 2014    Author notification of acceptance
April 15, 2014    Deadline for receipt of final manuscript

Information for Authors

1)    Information on the format and templates for papers can be found here:
       http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper%20Submission.htm
2)    Papers should be submitted via the IJCNN 2014 paper submission site:
       http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/ijcnn2014/upload.php3
       Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list
3)    Fill out the input fields, upload the PDF file of your paper and finalize your submission by the deadline of December 20, 2013

Special Session Organizers

Ah-Hwee Tan
School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Jacek Mańdziuk
Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland

Włodzisław Duch
Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland

Tuesday 29 October 2013

Call for papers: WCCI 2014 Special Session "Collaborative Learning and Optimization"

Learning and optimization are two essential tasks that computational intelligence aims to address. Numerous techniques have been developed for these two purposes separately. In fact, learning and optimization are closely related. On the one hand, learning can be formulated as a model-centric or data-centric optimization problem, and accordingly solved by optimization techniques. On the other hand, optimization can be regarded as an adaptive learning process, and thus tackled by learning methodologies. Recent years have seen remarkable attempts at collaborative learning and optimization. For instance, learning classifier systems, evolutionary neural networks, evolutionary ensemble learning, evolutionary kernel machines, evolutionary clustering, evolutionary data generation and extraction for learning, supervised classifiers’ domain of competence analysis using evolutionary multi-objective optimization, theoretical analysis of optimization techniques using learning theory, optimization by building and using probabilistic models, self-adaptive and tuning-free optimization, ensemble optimization, statistical analysis of evolutionary computation, automatic heuristic design, etc. These research efforts have leaded to a great deal of cutting-edge techniques in the corresponding research fields. Nowadays, the emergence of more and more complex problems in real-world applications insistently calls for in-depth investigations of synergy between learning and optimization. Moreover, feasibility of implementing collaborative learning and optimization techniques on massive parallel systems must be seriously taken into account to ensure that large-scale problems can be solved in a reasonable time. This symposium aims at providing a forum for academic and industrial researchers from both learning and optimization communities to review the past effort, to report the latest progress, and to explore the future direction of synergy between techniques from these two areas.

Scope:

The scope of this symposium covers, but is not limited to:
  • Learning based on data-centric optimization
  • Learning based on model-centric optimization 
  • Learning based multi-objective optimization
  • Competence analysis of learners using optimization techniques
  • Automatic selection of learning or optimization techniques 
  • Theoretical relationship between learning and optimization
  • Optimization based on state-of-the-art learning techniques
  • Self-adaptive and tuning-free optimization based on learning models
  • Analysis of optimizers using statistical & machine learning techniques
  • Collaborative learning and optimization on massively parallel systems
  • Real-world Applications of collaborative learning and optimization techniques.

Special Session Co-Chairs

Ke Tang, University of Science and Technology of China, China
E-mail: ketang@ustc.edu.cn

Kai Qin, RMIT University, Australia
E-mail: kai.qin@rmit.edu.au

Qingfu Zhang, University of Essex, UK
E-mail: qzhang@essex.ac.uk

Yew Soon Ong, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
E-mail: ASYSOng@ntu.edu.sg

Call for papers: WCCI 2014 Special Session "Learning and optimization in multi-criteria dynamic and uncertain environments"

Motivation

Many real-world environments have inherently multiple criteria (or objectives) that can be aligned as well as conflicting, resulting in complex Pareto. To efficiently explore these complex fronts, new exploration/exploitation techniques are needed. Inspiration for such techniques can be found in multi-objective optimization.

Usually, the state of the system is changing in time, making the environment dynamic. There are many interesting applications in the field of engineering, i.e. automatic control, robotics, where one wants to simultaneously fulfill different criteria using a number of constraints or preferences.

The task of an optimization algorithm in multi-criteria environments is to learn a strategy that optimizes all criteria at the same time or to find a good compromise solution. Thus, learning in the multi-criteria framework can be considerable harder than in the standard single objective framework. Currently, there are two major, conceptually different, approaches dealing with dynamic environments: i) Reinforcement Learning and ii) Evolutionary Algorithms.

Reinforcement learning is traditionally formalized within the Markov Decision Process (MDP) framework. An agent takes actions in a stochastic and possibly unknown environment, and moves between states in this environment. After each action, the agent receives a reward signal in order to develop a strategy that maximizes its long-term (cumulative) reward.

The approach of an Evolutionary Algorithms is to continuously track the optimum in dynamic environments, or to find a robust solution that operates optimally in the presence of uncertainties. This poses serious challenges to conventional EAs that are not conceptually designed to handle environmental changes.

Goal

The main goal of this special session is to start the process of unifying and streamlining research on learning in dynamic and uncertain multi-criteria environments which for time being seems to evolve independently and disconnected in Reinforcement learning and Evolutionary Algorithms. We want to bring together researchers from machine learning, optimization and artificial intelligence, interested multi-criteria decision making and/or multi-objective optimization in dynamic and uncertain environments. We also encourage submissions related to multi-criteria decision-making and/or multi-objective optimization in other areas such as operation research, games and real-world applications.

Ideally, the special session will bring together researches with different background in Machine Learning and Optimization in order to help them identifying common ground for their work.

Topics of interest

Topics of interests include but are not limited to:

  • Multi-objective reinforcement learning
  • Multi-objective optimization algorithms such as meta-heuristics, evolutionary algorithms, etc. for dynamic and uncertain environments
  • Theoretical results on the learnability in multi-objective dynamic and uncertain environments
  • Novel algorithmic frameworks for multi-objective environments 
  • Multi-criteria aspects of robotics
  • Multi-objective self-adapting systems
  • Multi-objective automatic configuration systems
  • Multi-objective games
  • Multi-criteria decision making in dynamic and uncertain environments
  • Real-world applications in engineering, business, computer science, biological sciences, scientific computation, etc. in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments
  • Multi-criteria dynamic/reactive scheduling and planning

Information for Authors

This section is part of IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Network 2014 (IEEE IJCNN 2014)

1)    Information on the format and templates for papers can be found here:
       http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper Submission.htm
2)    Papers should be submitted via the IJCNN 2014 paper submission site:
       http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/ijcnn2014/upload.php3
3)    Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list
4)    Fill out the input fields, upload the PDF file of your paper and finalize your submission by the deadline of December 20, 2013

Organizers

Dr. eng. Madalina M. Drugan,
Computational Modeling group, Artificial Intelligence Lab of Computer Science Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium
e-mail: Madalina.Drugan@vub.ac.be

Prof. dr. Ann Nowe,
Computational Modeling group, Artificial Intelligence Lab of Computer Science Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium
e-mail: Ann.Nowe@vub.ac.be

Important dates

Paper submission: 20 December, 2013
Decision: 15 March, 2014
Final paper submission: 15 April, 2014
Conference dates: 6-11 July, 2014

Monday 28 October 2013

Call for papers: WCCI 2014 Special Session "Artificial Bee Colony algorithms and their applications"

Aims and Scope

Biological communities like insect colonies display remarkable collective intelligence in carrying out their tasks references for studying the delicate processes of swarming behaviour. Bee colony is one such potent example and swarm literature presents instances of successful algorithms devised based on various activities of the bees. In general, swarm intelligence is based on collective behavior of self-organized systems. As a typical example of swarm intelligence, the bee swarming around her hive has received significant interest from researchers. Recently there has been a surge of interest in developing algorithms for search, optimization, and communication by simulating different aspects of the social life of a very well-known creature: the honey bee. Several articles reporting the success of the heuristics based on swarming, mating, and foraging behaviors of the honey bees are being published on a regular basis. By modeling the specific intelligent behaviors of honey bee swarms, an artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is developed to optimize multi-variable and multi-modal continuous functions.

For over past one decade or so, researchers have been developing several algorithms based on various intelligent behaviors of the honey bee swarms. Among these, ABC has been vastly accepted by the computational intelligence community and today it is the one of the most widely studied approaches for real parameter optimization. During the last five years, research on and with the algorithms based on bees swarm etc. has reached a very promising state. But there is still a long way to go in order to fully utilize the potential of the SI algorithms imitating the behaviour of the honey bees. As for example, the convergence and stability of the dynamics of ABC algorithm has been hardly studied. Application of ABC and similar algorithms based on the bees foraging behaviour to discrete/combinatorial optimization problems are also rare. This special session aims at bringing researchers from academia and industry together to report and review the latest progresses in this rapidly emerged field, to explore future directions of research, and to publicize the bee colony based algorithms and metaheuristics to a wider audience.

Topics Covered

Authors are invited to submit their original and unpublished work in the areas including (but not limited to) the following:
1) Theoretical and empirical study of ABC and similar bees foraging based algorithms with special emphasis on mathematical modeling and dynamical analysis for investigating issues like convergence, stability, and robustness.
2) Connections to / comparison with other powerful swarm and evolutionary computing algorithms like Particle Swarm Optimization, Genetic Algorithms, Differential Evolution etc.
3) Development, benchmarking, and evaluation of new bee colony based algorithms.
4) Parameter automation and self-adaptation in foraging based optimization techniques
5) ABC algorithms for optimization in dynamic and noisy environments
6) ABC algorithms for constrained, niching, and multi-objective optimization
7) ABC algorithms for discrete and combinatorial optimization
7) Applications to diverse domains including: Swarm robotics, Adaptive and optimal control, Optimal dynamics resource allocation problems, Distributed control of uninhabited autonomous vehicles, Fuzzy/neural controller design for nonlinear systems, Training artificial neural networks for pattern recognition, Clustering and Classification, Forming manufacturing cells, Optimal scheduling of jobs for a production machine, Telecommunication network routing and network optimization, Financial prediction, Econometrics, and Business Intelligence, Generalized assignment problems, Power Systems, Robust multi-agent system design.

Submission

 Please follow the IEEE WCCI 2014 instruction for authors and submit your paper via the IEEE WCCI 2014 online submission system. Please specify that your paper is for the Special Session on Artificial Bee Colony algorithms and their applications.  The authors intended to contribute to IEEE WCCI 2014 Special Sessions are kindly recommended to follow the manuscript style information and templates of regular IEEE WCCI 2014 papers, as described here.

Please note that this Special Session is specifically and exclusively related to IEEE CEC 2014.

When submitting their manuscripts, authors are recommended to follow these steps:
1. Identify the conference associated to the Special Session they are interested in, by looking at the   "Provisionally Accepted Special Session" list under the column called ID;
2. Go to the related conference submission website;
3. Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list;
4. Fill out the input fields, upload the pdf file and finalize the submission by December 20, 2013.

Important Dates

Paper Submission Deadline:             December 20, 2013
Notification of Acceptance:              March 15, 2014
Final Paper Submission Deadline:     April 15, 2014  
Early/Paper Author Registration:      April 15, 2014 
 

Organisers:

Swagatam Das, Indian Statistical Institute,  India, E-mail: swagatam.das@isical.ac.in.
M. Fatih Tasgetiren, Yasar University, Izmir, Turkey, Email: fatih.tasgetiren@yasar.edu.tr

Call for papers: WCCI 214 Special Session "Artificial Neural Networks and Learning Techniques towards Intelligent Transport Systems"

Theme and Scope

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) is a key field of research around mobility of people and goods. The term Intelligence in ITS mainly refers to innovation in methodologies and the creation of additional services rather than for computational intelligence related algorithms and systems. This special session focuses on intelligent algorithms in ITS, with a focus on Computational Intelligence and in specific on Artificial Neural Networks and Learning Techniques.

The aim of this special session in Artificial Neural Networks and Learning Techniques towards Intelligent Transport Systems is to gather and focus high quality research papers that advance ITS, provide new insights and nourish new innovation in this growing field by means of advanced Computational Intelligence based techniques.

Topics

  • Adaptive Urban Transport
  • Learning and Optimisation in Traffic Management
  • Learning Traffic Models for Simulation
  • Intelligent Analysis and Modelling of Transport related Air Quality
  • Adaptive Personal Mobility - Health and Wellbeing
  • Learning and Optimisation in Modal Shift
  • Adaptive and Optimised Supply Chain Management

 

Information for Authors

1.    Information on the format and templates for papers can be found here:
http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper%20Submission.htm
2.    Papers should be submitted via the IJCNN 2014 paper submission site:
http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/ijcnn2014/upload.php
3.    Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list.
4.    Fill out the input fields, upload the PDF file of your paper and finalize your submission by the deadline of 20th December 2013.

Important Dates

20th December 2013    Paper submission
15th March 2014    Notification to authors
15th April 2014    Camera-ready papers
6th - 11th July 2013    Conference Days

Organizers

David A. Elizondo
Benjamin N. Passow
Enrique Dominguez,
Eric Goodyer

Friday 25 October 2013

Call for papers: WCCI 2014 Special Session "Evolutionary Computation in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments (ECiDUE)"

Aims and Scope

Many real-world optimization problems are subject to dynamism and uncertainties that are often impossible to avoid in practice. For instance, the fitness function is uncertain or noisy as a result of simulation/ measurement errors or approximation errors (in the case where surrogates are used in place of the computationally expensive high fidelity fitness function). In addition, the design variables or environmental conditions can be perturbed or they change over time.

The tools to solve these dynamic and uncertain optimization problems (DOP) should be flexible, able to tolerate uncertainties, fast to allow reaction to changes and adaptive. Moreover, the objective of such tools is no longer to simply locate the global optimum solution, but to continuously track the optimum in dynamic environments, or to find a robust solution that operates properly in the presence of uncertainties.

The last decade has witnessed increasing research efforts on handling dynamic and uncertain optimization problems using evolutionary algorithms and other metaheuristics, and a variety of methods have been reported across a broad range of application backgrounds.

This special session aims at bringing together researchers from both academia and industry to review the latest advances and explore future directions in this field. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

  • Benchmark problems and performance measures
  • Dynamic single - and multi-objective optimization
  • Adaptation, learning, and anticipation
  • Models of uncertainty and their management
  • Handling noisy fitness functions
  • Using fitness approximations
  • Searching for robust optimal solutions
  • Algorithm comparison and benchmarking
  • Hybrid approaches
  • Theoretical analysis
  • Real-world applications

 

Deadline:

The deadline for submission to this special session is 20 December 2013.

 

Information for Authors:

1) Information on the format and templates for papers can be found here:
http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper%20Submission.htm
2) Papers should be submitted via the  CEC 2014 paper submission site:
http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/cec2014/upload.php
3) Select SS21.EC21 in the main research topic dropdown list.
4) Fill out the input fields, upload the PDF file of your paper and finalize your submission by the deadline of December 20, 2013.

 

Organisers:

Dr. Michalis Mavrovouniotis: De Montfort University, United Kingdom
email: mmavrovouniotis@dmu.ac.uk

Dr. Changhe Li: China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China.
email: changhe.lw@gmail.com.

Prof. Shengxiang Yang: De Montfort University, United Kingdom
email:  syang@dmu.ac.uk

Prof. Xin Yao: University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
email:  x.yao@cs.bham.ac.uk

Call for papers: WCCI 2014 Special Session "Time series: Advanced methods of analysis and forecast"

Aims and scope

For a long time, time series processing was the prerogative of statistics. This tradition was broken with the emergence of such modern methods of data analysis as neural networks, fuzzy sets, rough sets, etc. These non-statistical methods are especially useful in the cases when time series are short and/or cannot be characterized as stochastic processes, i.e., time series observations are vague and do not show regular behavior. Typical examples are financial and medical time series.  

The aim of this special session is to present recent developments and trends in time series analysis and forecasting including fuzzy time series and granular time series. We are aware that representation and processing of time series are tighty connected. We invite contributions that extend traditional ways of modeling time series and propose adequate methods for their processing. A special focus will be made on  processing and forecasting of multi-variate time series.

We expect that this special session will collect fundamental and theoretical results, show other than the approaches mentioned above and overview the existing ones.
We invite contributions focused on (but not limited to) the following topics:

  • time series trends, tendencies and their models,
  • fuzzy time series, granular time series and their models,
  • time series classification and forecast,
  • forecasting methods: regression, fuzzy regression, fuzzy/linguistic IF-THEN rules,
  • forecasting of multi-variate time series,
  • F-transform and fuzzy natural logic in time series analysis and forecast,
  • special classes of time series.

Organizers

Irina Perfilieva a), Nadezhda Yarushkina b), Jin Hee Yoon c), Morteza Saberi d)

a)Institute for Research and Applications of Fuzzy Modeling,  University of Ostrava
30 dubna 22, 701 03 Ostrava 1, Czech Republic
Email: irina.perfilieva@osu.cz

b)Inf Systems. Dept., Ulyanovsk Technical State University, Russia
Email: jng@ulstu.ru

c)Math Dept., Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
Email: jin9135@yonsei.ac.kr

d)Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Tafresh, Iran
Email: m.saberi@engmail.ut.ac.ir

Deadline
The deadline for submissions to this special session is 20 December 2013.

Information for Authors

1)    Information on the format and templates for papers can be found here:
       http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper%20Submission.htm
2)    Papers should be submitted via the IJCNN 2014 paper submission site:
       http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/ijcnn2014/upload.php3
       Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list
4)    Fill out the input fields, upload the PDF file of your paper and finalize your submission by the deadline of December 20, 2013

Thursday 24 October 2013

Call for Papers: WCCI 2014 Special Session "Fuzzy and Rough Hybridization"

The idea of forming information entities based around some form of relatedness into granules, offers a universal and intuitive appeal. In recent years, rough set theory (RST) has generated a great deal of interest amongst researchers and has been applied to a wide variety of different domains (e.g. classification, information retrieval, rule-mining, etc.). The popularity of the theory is related to a number of appealing underlying characteristics, in particular those related to the granulation of data.

RST however, can only handle one type of imperfection to be found in data. Hybridisations with other Computational Intelligence techniques that are tolerant of imperfect data and knowledge such as fuzzy sets offer improved approaches for dealing with additional aspects of data imperfection. The integration of RST and other techniques therefore offers a high degree of flexibility and provides robust methods
and advanced tools for the analysis of data.

Objectives and Topics:

This session is proposed as a forum to:
  • Draw together current original research in the fast-growing area of fuzzy and rough set hybridization.
  • Promote the practical and theoretical extensions of fuzzy and rough hybridizations.
  • Foster the integration of fuzzy and rough hybridizations with other computational intelligence techniques.
Novel practical or theoretical contributions describing advances and results are welcomed in all areas where fuzzy and rough set theory can be integrated.

Important Dates:

Deadline for Paper Submission: 20 December 2013
Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: 15 March 2014
Deadline for Final Paper Submission: 15 April 2014
Conference Dates: 6-11 July 2014

Organizers and Contact Information:

Name: Neil Mac Parthaláin
Email address: ncm@aber.ac.uk
Affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK.

Name: Richard Jensen
Email address: rkj@aber.ac.uk
Affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK.

Name: Qiang Shen
Email address: qqs@aber.ac.uk
Affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK.

Wednesday 23 October 2013

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Evolutionary Computation for Planning and Scheduling"

Aim:

Planning and scheduling is an important issue in the area of operations research and management sciences. Due to the challenges in both research and practical applications, the techniques for solving planning and scheduling problems have been attached great attention during the last decades. This special session aims to promote the research of evolutionary computation in a wide range of planning and scheduling problems and bring together state-of-the-art researches in the area.

Scope:

Since most of planning and scheduling problems are combinatorial and strongly NP-hard, evolutionary approaches, such as genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization, genetic programming, ant colony systems, cultural algorithms, evolutionary strategies, are preferable to solve the problems. The scope of the special session includes, but is not limited to the following topics:
  • Strategic planning
  • Production planning
  • Manufacturing planning and control
  • Mission capability planning
  • Satellite planning and scheduling
  • Portfolio planning and management 
  • Capability investment management
  • Job shop scheduling
  • Flow shop scheduling
  • Project scheduling
  • Timetable scheduling
  • Hospital scheduling
  • Call center scheduling
  • transport scheduling
  • Resource allocation
  • Multi-objective planning and scheduling
  • Planning and scheduling with uncertainty
  • Scheduling with big data
  • Scheduling in the Cloud

Submission guidelines:

The authors intended to contribute to IEEE WCCI 2014 Special Sessions are kindly recommended to follow the manuscript style information and templates of regular IEEE WCCI 2014 papers.

Please note that each Special Session is specifically and exclusively related to one of the three conferences composing the IEEE WCCI 2014, i.e., IJCNN2014, FUZZ-IEEE2014, and IEEE CEC 2014.

When submitting their manuscripts, authors are recommended to follow these steps:
  1. Identify the conference associated to the Special Session they are interested in, by looking at the "Provisionally Accepted Special Session" list under the column called ID;
  2. Go to the related conference submission website;
  3. Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list (our Special Session name is Evolutionary Computation for Planning and Scheduling)
  4. Fill out the input fields, upload the pdf file and finalize the submission by December 20, 2013.

Organizer:


Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization"

Aim and Scope

Due to the challenges of many real world applications in both research and practice, combinatorial optimization problems represent important research areas. They have received a significant amount of attention in a wide range of disciplines including operational research, artificial intelligence, computer science, engineering, manufacturing, and management, and so on. Different constraints, objectives as well as problem characteristics have to be considered while developing efficient and intelligent computational methods for these complex and large-scale problems. Evolutionary computation algorithms have been applied to a range of domains in combinatorial optimization.

This special session aims to bring together state-of-the-art research on evolutionary computation in a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems. Examples of computational algorithms include ant colony systems, artificial immune systems, cultural algorithms, evolutionary strategies, genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolutionary based hyper-heuristics, memetic algorithms, path relinking, particle swarm optimization and scatter search, etc.

Topics of applications include but not limited to:
  • 2D/3D strip packing and bin packing
  • assignment problem
  • cutting stock
  • scheduling, dynamic scheduling and rescheduling
  • educational timetabling
  • grid scheduling
  • knapsack problems
  • multi-objective scheduling
  • network routing
  • personnel scheduling
  • portfolio optimisation
  • production scheduling
  • project scheduling
  • recourse allocation
  • space allocation
  • sports timetabling
  • transport scheduling
  • and many more

Important Dates

Paper Submission: 20 December 2013
Decision Notification: 15 March 2014
Camera-Ready Submission: 15 April 2014

Paper submission

Please follow the IEEE CEC/WCCI 2014 Submission Web Site. Please select the corresponding special session name ("Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimisation") as the “main research topic” in submission. Special session papers as included as regular conference papers.

Organizers

Rong Qu
School of Computer Science
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, UK
Email: rxq@cs.nott.ac.uk

A. Sima Uyar
Computer Engineering Department
Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey
Email: etaner@itu.edu.tr

Michel Toulouse
Department of computer science
Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma, USA
Email: michel.toulouse@cirrelt.ca

Tuesday 22 October 2013

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Evolutionary Computation for Music, Art, and Creativity"

Aim and Scope

Evolutionary computation (EC) techniques, including genetic algorithm, evolution strategies, genetic programming, particle swarm optimization, ant colony optimization, differential evolution, and memetic algorithms, have shown to be effective for search and optimization problems. Recently, EC gained several promising results and becomes an important tool in computational creativity, such as in music, visual art, literature, architecture, and industrial design.

The aim of this special session is to reflect the most recent advances of EC for Music, Art, and Creativity, with the goal to enhance autonomous creative systems as well as human creativity. This session will allow researchers to share experiences and present their new ways for taking advantage of EC techniques in computational creativity. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, EC technologies in the following aspects:
  • Generation of music, visual art, literature, architecture, and industrial design
  • Algorithmic design in creative intelligence
  • Optimization in creativity
  • Development of hardware and software for creative systems
  • Evaluation methodologies
  • Assistance of human creativity
  • Computational aesthetics
  • Emotion response
  • Human-machine creativity

Deadline

The deadline for submissions to this special session is 20 December 2013.
Information for Authors
1. Information on the format and templates for papers can be found here: 
    http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper%20Submission.htm
2. Papers should be submitted via the IEEE CEC 2014 paper submission site:   
    http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/cec2014/upload.php
3. Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list:   
    [SS3. EC03: Evolutionary Computation for Music, Art, and Creativity]
4.    Fill out the input fields, upload the PDF file of your paper and finalize your submission by the deadline of December 20, 2013

Organizers:

This special session is organized by the co-chairs of IEEE CIS ETTC Task Force on Creative Intelligence
  • Chuan-Kang Ting, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan. ckting@cs.ccu.edu.tw
  • Francisco Fernández de Vega, University of Extremadura, Spain. fcofdez@unex.es
  • Palle Dahlstedt, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. palle.dahlstedt@ait.gu.se

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Intelligent Network Systems"

Aim and Scope

The impact of optimization in network environments, such as communication networks and transportation networks, on the modern economy and society has been growing steadily over the last few decades. The worldwide division of labor, the connection of distributed centers, and the increased mobility of individuals and devices lead to an increased demand for efficient solutions to solve optimization problems in network systems. With the advent of computer systems, computational intelligence approaches have been developed for systematic design, optimization, and improvement of different network systems.

The aim of the special session is to promote research and reflect the most recent advances of computational intelligence, including evolutionary computation, neural network, fuzzy systems, metaheuristic techniques and other intelligent methods, in the solution of problems in network systems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
  • Communication network systems:  telecommunications; mobile, satellite, optical, and voice communications; personal communication systems; switching and routing; transmission systems; communication systems simulation; station and antenna design; information and speech processing; intrusion detection; error control coding; compression and cryptography; propagation and channel modeling, protocol design, etc.
  • Transportation and logistics network systems: transportation and supply networks; logistics; supply chain management; freight and passenger services; tracking and tracing; fleet and order management; modeling and traffic management; traffic simulation; individual and public transportation; inventory optimization; routing and scheduling, etc.
  • Social network systems: action policies; networking strategies; network and friendship management; identification of interests; advertisement of interests; hierarchical networks; distributed games; behavior analysis; inter-personal communication; group communication, etc.
  • Financial and economic network systems: system modeling; modeling payment system, market modeling; forecasting market prices; price tracking; invest strategies; portfolio strategies; measuring systemic importance of the financial system though the network topology, etc.
  • General network problems: parallel and distributed systems; networks and graph problems; unconstrained and constrained network design problems; structural and computational complexity; adaptability to environmental variations; robustness to network changes and failures; effectiveness and scalability of performance; location and link design; reliability and failure; corporate network design; location placement; network

Deadline

The deadline for submissions to this special session is 20 December 2013.

Information for Authors

1. Information on the format and templates for papers can be found here:   
    http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper%20Submission.htm
2. Papers should be submitted via the IEEE CEC 2014 paper submission site:   
    http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/cec2014/upload.php
3. Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list:   
    [SS10. EC10: Intelligent Network Systems]
4. Fill out the input fields, upload the PDF file of your paper and finalize your submission by the deadline of
    December 20, 2013

Organizers:

This special session is organized by IEEE CIS ISATC Task Force on Intelligent Network Systems
(TF-INS)
  • Chuan-Kang Ting, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan. ckting@cs.ccu.edu.tw
  • Hui Cheng, Liverpool John Moores University, UK. hui.cheng@beds.ac.uk
  • Shengxiang Yang, De Montfort University, UK. syang@dmu.ac.uk
  • Jun Zhang, Sun Yat-Sen University, China. issai@mail.sysu.edu.cn
  • Zhun Fan, Shantou University, China. zfan@stu.edu.cn

Monday 21 October 2013

Webinar: So you want to be an Academic? Some Tips and Tricks

Professor Bob John of University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, will give a live webinar to our IEEE CIS members and friends. The information of the webinar is shown below: 

Webinar arrangement 

Topic: 
So you want to be an Academic? Some Tips and Tricks 

Date and time:      
2:00 PM, Oct 23, 2013, BST  (London Time)
9:00 AM, Oct 23, 2013, EDT  (New York Time)
9:00 PM, Oct 23, 2013, HKT  (Hong Kong Time) 

Webinar ID: 
112-059-947 

Registration

The webinar is free-of-charge. We only have limited seats. First come first served.

Please register for "So you want to be an Academic? Some Tips and Tricks" on Oct 23, 2013 2:00 PM BST at: 

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5187699622185856768 

Webinar information

Speaker:
Professor Bob John, Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning Group (ASAP), University of Nottingham, United Kingdom 

Abstract:
This webinar will be given by Bob John who has led two highly successful computational intelligence research groups (www.cci.dmu.ac.uk and www.asap.ac.uk) for more than 12 years. He will give his personal views, based on his experiences, of what's needed to become an academic. Although based in the United Kingdom the points he makes will broadly translate to other countries. He will discuss your best strategies for producing publications, the role of networking, looking for funding and generally how to get on the academic career ladder. 

Speaker's Biography:
Bob has a BSc Mathematics, a MSc in Statistics and a PhD in Fuzzy Logic. He worked in industry for 10 years as a mathematician and knowledge engineer developing knowledge based systems for British Gas and the financial services industry. Bob spent 24 years at De Montfort University in various roles including Head of Department, Head of School and Deputy Dean. He led the Centre for Computational Intelligence research group from 2001 until 2012. He has over 150 research publications of which about 50 are in international journals. Bob joined the University of Nottingham this year where he heads up the Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning (ASAP) research group in the School of Computer Science. The ASAP research group carries out multi-disciplinary research into mathematical models and algorithms for a variety of real-world optimisation problems. ASAP has 8 academic staff, 9 researchers and over 30 PhD students.

Only limited seats are available. Please register as soon as possible. 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Memetic Computing"

Organized by IEEE CIS Emergent Technologies Task Force on Memetic Computing.

Memetic Computing (MC) is defined as a paradigm that uses the notion of meme(s) as units of information encoded in computational representations for the purpose of problem-solving. MC first emerged as population-based meta-heuristic algorithms or hybrid global-local search or more commonly now as memetic algorithm (MA), inspired by Darwinian principles of natural selection and Dawkins’ notion of a meme defined as a unit of cultural evolution that is capable of local/individual refinements. The metaphorical parallels to, on the one hand, Darwinian evolution and, on the other hand, between memes and domain specific heuristics are captured within MAs thus rendering a methodology that balances well generality and problem-specificity.

Taking advantage of both biological selection and cultural selection, a plethora of potentially rich MC methodologies, frameworks and operational meme-inspired algorithms have been developed with considerable success in several real-world domains. Yet, there remain many open issues and opportunities that are continually emerging as intriguing challenges for the field. The aim of this special session is to serve as a forum for scientists in this field to exchange the latest advantages in theories, technologies, and practice of MC.

Covered Topics

Authors are invited to submit their original and unpublished work in the following areas:
  • Novel competitive, collaborative and cooperative frameworks of memetic computation,
  • Analytical and/or theoretical studies that enhance our understanding on the behaviors of memetic computation, 
  • Formal and Probabilistic Single/Multi-Objective memetic frameworks, 
  • Cognitive, Brain, individual learning, and social learning inspired memetic computation 
  • Partial or full or meta-Lamarckian/Baldwinian, meta-learning, agent based memetic computation.
  • Memetic frameworks using surrogate or approximation methods, 
  • Memetic frameworks for computationally expensive problems and real-world applications,
  • Knowledge incorporation in memetic computation.

Important Dates

  • Paper submission deadline: December 20, 2013
  • Paper acceptance notification date: March 15, 2014
  • Final paper submission deadline: April 15, 2014
  • Early registration: April 15, 2014

Paper Submission

All papers should be submitted electronically through:
http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/cec2014/upload.php
To submit your papers to the MC special session, please select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic.

For more submission information please visit:
http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper%20Submission.htm

Organizers

Dr. Zexuan Zhu
College of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shenzhen University, China
E-mail: zhuzx@szu.edu.cn
Homepage: http://csse.szu.edu.cn/staff/zhuzx/

Dr. Wenyin Gong
China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China
E-Mail: wenyingong@yahoo.com; wygong@cug.edu.cn
Homepage: http://cs.cug.edu.cn/teacherweb/gwy/index.htm

Dr. Yew-Soon Ong
School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
E-mail: asysong@ntu.edu.sg
Homepage: http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/asysong/

Friday 18 October 2013

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Evolutionary Computation in Big Data"

Overview

Nowadays, big data has been attracting increasing attention from academia, industry and government. The big data is defined as the dataset whose size is beyond the processing ability of typical database or computers. The big data analytics is to automatically extract knowledge from large amounts of data. It can be seen as mining or processing of massive data, and “useful” information could be retrieved from large dataset. Big data analytics can be characterized with several properties, such as large volume, variety of different sources, and fast increasing speed (velocity). It is of great interest to investigate the role of evolutionary computing (EC) techniques, including evolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence algorithms in optimization and learning involving big data, in particular the ability of EC techniques to solve large scale, dynamic, and sometimes multi-objective big data analytics problems.

Topics of Interest

This special session aims at presenting the latest developments of EC techniques for big data problems, as well as exchanging new ideas and discussing the future directions of EC for big data. Original contributions that provide novel theories, frameworks, and solutions to challenging problems of big data analytics are very welcome for this Special Session. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
1)    High-dimensional and many-objective evolutionary optimization 
2)    Big data driven optimization of complex engineering systems
3)    Integrative analytics of diverse, structured and unstructured data
4)    Extracting new understanding from real-time, distributed, diverse and large-scale data resources
5)    Big data visualization and visual data analytics
6)    Scalable, incremental learning and understanding of big data
7)    Scalable learning techniques for big data
8)    Big data driven optimization of complex systems
9)    Human-computer interaction and collaboration in big data
10)    Big data and cloud computing
11)    Cross-connections of big data analysis and hardware
12)    Big data techniques for business intelligence, finance, healthcare, bioinformatics, intelligent transportation, smart city, smart sensor networks, cyber security and other critical application areas

Submission

Please follow the IEEE WCCI 2014 instruction for authors and submit your paper via the IEEE WCCI 2014 online submission system. Please specify that your paper is for the Special Session on Evolutionary Computation in Big Data.

Important Dates

Paper Submission Deadline:             December 20, 2013
Notification of Acceptance:              March 15, 2014
Final Paper Submission Deadline:     April 15, 2014   
Early/Paper Author Registration:      April 15, 2014   

Organisers

Shi Cheng, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China, shi.cheng@nottingham.edu.cn
Yuhui Shi, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou China, yuhui.shi@xjtlu.edu.cn
Yaochu Jin, University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom, yaochu.jin@surrey.ac.uk

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Brain storm optimization and its applications"

Overview

The Brain Storm Optimization (BSO) algorithm is a new kind of swarm intelligence, which is based on the collective behaviour of human being, that is, the brainstorming process. It is natural to expect that an optimization algorithm based on human collective behaviour could be a better optimization algorithm than existing swarm intelligence algorithms which are based on collective behaviour of simple insects, because human beings are social animal and are the most intelligent animals in the world. The designed optimization algorithm will naturally have the capability of both convergence and divergence.

The brain storm optimization is a young and promising algorithm in swarm intelligence. In a brain storm optimization algorithm, the solutions are separated into several clusters. The best solutions of each cluster are kept to the next iteration. New individual can be generated based on one or two individuals in clusters.

The brain storm optimization algorithm can be seen as a combination of swarm intelligence and data mining techniques. Every individual in the brain storm optimization algorithm is not a solution to the problem to be optimized, but also a data point to reveal the landscapes of the problem. The swarm intelligence and data mining techniques can be combined to produce benefits above and beyond what either method could achieve alone.

Aim and Scope

This special session aims at fostering the latest development of brain storm optimization algorithms and its applications, as well as exchanging of related ideas and discussing the future directions. Original contributions that provide novel theories, frameworks, solutions, and applications to challenging problems of Brain Storm Optimization Algorithms are very welcome for this Special Session. We invite researchers to submit their original and unpublished work related to, but not limited to, the following topics:
  • Brain storm optimization with data mining techniques
  • BSO for Multi-objective optimization
  • BSO for Constrained optimization
  • BSO for Discrete optimization
  • Brain Strom optimization in uncertain environments
  • Theoretical aspects of brain storm optimization
  • BSO for Real-world applications

Submission

Please follow the IEEE WCCI 2014 instruction for authors and submit your paper via the IEEE WCCI 2014 online submission system. Please specify that your paper is for the Special Session on Brain Storm Optimization and Its Applications.

Important Dates

Paper Submission Deadline    December 20, 2013
Notification of Acceptance:    March 15, 2014
Final Paper Submission Deadline:    April 15, 2014   
Early/Paper Author Registration:    April 15, 2014    

Organisers

Shi Cheng, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China, shi.cheng@nottingham.edu.cn
Zhi-hui Zhan, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China, zhanzhh@mail.sysu.edu.cn
Yuhui Shi, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou China, yuhui.shi@xjtlu.edu.cn

Thursday 17 October 2013

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Cognition and Development"

Aim and Scope

The special session aims at the presentation of the latest models and results in the investigation of developmental issues in cognitive development and their application to computational and robotics models. In particular it encourages submissions on neural computation and cognitive robotics models of sensorimotor, cognitive and social development inspired by our understanding of human development. These include evolutionary and developmental models of the origins of intrinsic motivation, perceptual and motor development, social learning and interaction, imitation, acquisition of communicative and linguistic skills, and reasoning.

Scientific challenges addressed by these models include: What are the mechanisms that allow a child (and a robot) to develop autonomously cognitive capabilities? How does the social and physical environment, with which the child interacts, shape and scaffold the child’s developing cognitive skills and knowledge? What is the relative contribution of Nature and Nurture in the development of human and machine intelligence? What do qualitative stages during development, and body and brain maturational changes, tell us about the mechanisms and principles supporting development?

The special session also encourages submissions from the empirical developmental science disciplines, such as child psychology, developmental linguistics and neuroscience, and interdisciplinary approaches to cognition and development.

A special issue in the journal IEEE Transaction in Autonomous Mental Development will be organised, as a follow-up of the special session.

List of Main Topics

  • Developmental robotics
  • epigenetic robotics
  • neuro-robotics
  •  bio-inspired and cognitive robotics
  • cognitive modelling
  • intrinsic motivation
  • sensorimotor development
  • cognitive development
  • social development
  • language acquisition

Organizers:

Angelo Cangelosi, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK
Matt Schlesinger, University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, USA
Yukie Nagai, Osaka University, Japan

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Evolutionary Bilevel Optimization"

Organizers:
Name: Dr. Ankur Sinha
Prof. Kalyanmoy Deb
Affiliation: Aalto University School of Business, Helsinki, Finland
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Aim and Scope:
Bilevel optimization problems are special kind of optimization problems that require every feasible upper-level solution to satisfy the optimality conditions of a lower-level optimization problem. These problems are commonly found in many practical problem solving tasks, which include optimal control, process optimization, game-playing strategy development, transportation problems, coordination of multi-divisional firms, and others. Bilevel programming is also useful for optimal parameter setting in evolutionary algorithms and machine learning approaches. Due to the computation expense and other difficulties involved in handling such problems, they are often handled using approximate solution procedures. There is a need for theoretical as well as methodological advancements to handle such problems efficiently.

IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) being one of the leading conferences in evolutionary computation will give an opportunity to researchers and practitioners to discuss and exchange ideas for handling bilevel problems, which have yet not been widely explored by the evolutionary computation community. The special session on Bilevel Optimization will bring together researchers working on the following topics:

  • Evolutionary algorithms for bilevel optimization problems
  • Evolutionary algorithms for multi-objective bilevel optimization problems
  • Approximate procedures to handle bilevel optimization problems
  • Hybrid approaches to handle bilevel optimization problems
  • Theoretical results on bilevel optimization problems
  • Hierarchical decision making
  • Bilevel Application Problems

Keywords
Bilevel Optimization, Bilevel Multi-objective Optimization, Evolutionary Algorithms, Multi-Criteria Decision Making, Theory on Bilevel Programming, Hierarchical Decision Making, Bilevel Applications, Hybrid Algorithms

Important Dates
Submission Deadline: December 20, 2013
Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: March 15, 2014
Final Paper Submission: April 15, 2014

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Neural Networks applied to Vision and Robotics"

Aim 

Over the last decades there has been an increasing interest in using neural networks and other computational intelligence paradigms combined with computer vision techniques to create autonomous systems that solve vision problems in different fields. This workshop is designed to serve researchers and developers to publish original, innovative and state-of-the art algorithms and architectures for real time applications in the areas of computer vision, image processing, biometrics, virtual and augmented reality, neural networks, intelligent interfaces and biomimetic object-vision recognition.

This workshop provides a platform for academics, developers, and industry-related researchers belonging to the vast communities of *Neural Networks*, *Computational Intelligence*, *Machine Learning*, *Biometrics*, *Vision systems*, and *Robotics *, to discuss, share experience and explore traditional and new areas of the computer vision and computational intelligence combined to solve a range of problems. The objective of the workshop is to integrate the growing international community of researchers working on the application of Computational Intelligence techniques in Vision and Robotics to a fruitful discussion on the evolution and the benefits of this technology to the society.

After the success of the special session organized for IJCNN 2013, we are pleased to organize a second edition of NNVR in conjunction with WCCI 2014.
Scope

The Special Session topics can be identified by, but are not limited to, the following subjects:
  • Artificial Vision
  • Video tracking 
  • 3D Scene reconstruction
  • 3D Tracking in Virtual Reality Environments 
  • 3D Volume visualization
  • Computational Intelligence
  • Intelligent Interfaces (User-friendly Man Machine Interface)
  • Self-adaptation and self-organisational systems
  • Multi-camera and RGB-D camera systems 
  • Robust computer vision algorithms (operation under variable conditions, object tracking, behaviour analysis and learning, scene segmentation) 
  • Gesture and posture analysis and recognition 
  • Biometric Identification and Recognition 
  • Extraction of Biometric Features (fingerprint, iris, face, voice, palm, gait)
  • Surveillance systems
  • Robotics vision
  • Hardware implementation and algorithms acceleration (GPUs, FPGA,s,…)

 

Important dates

Paper Submission Deadline: December 20, 2013
Paper acceptance notification date:  March 15, 2014
Final paper submission deadline: April 15, 2014
Early Registration: April 15, 2014

 

Information for Authors

1)    Information on the format and templates for papers can be found here:
       http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper%20Submission.htm
2)    Papers should be submitted via the IJCNN 2014 paper submission site:
       http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/ijcnn2014/upload.php3
       Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list
3)    Fill out the input fields, upload the PDF file of your paper and finalize your submission by the deadline of December 20, 2013
4)    More information can be found in: http://www.dtic.ua.es/~jgarcia/IJCNN2014

Organisers

José García-Rodríguez -University of Alicante (Spain) (jgarcia@dtic.ua.es)
Alexandra Psarrou – University of Westminster (UK) (psarroa@wmin.ac.uk)
Andrew Lewis – Griffith University (Australia) (a.lewis@griffith.edu.au)
Anastassia Angelopoulou – University of Westminster (UK) (agelopa@wmin.ac.uk)


Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Evolutionary Computing with Deterministic Chaos"

Organized by

Ivan Zelinka
Department of Computer Science
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science VŠB-TUO
17. listopadu 15
708 33 Ostrava-Poruba
Czech Republic
www.ivanzelinka.eu

Guanrong Chen
Department of Electronic Engineering
City University of Hong Kong
Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR
P. R. China

Ponnuthurai Nagaratnam Suganthan
Division of Control & Instrumentation
School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
College of Engineering
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

and

Andy Adamatzky
Director of the Unconventional
Computing Centre
University of the West of England
Bristol BS16 1QY
UK


Motivation and Scope

Evolutionary computing as well as deterministic chaos is a vibrant area of research in the last decades. To date,  large set of nonlinear systems exhibiting chaotic and/or emergent behaviours are observed, analysed and used. They include evolutionary algorithms, as Wright and Agapie proposed in Cyclic and Chaotic Behavior in Genetic Algorithms in 2001 on GECCO conference. Such algorithms, systems and its mutual fusion form an essential part of science and engineering. Most notable examples include chaos control and synchronization, chaotic dynamics for pseudo-random number generators in evolutionary algorithms, modelling of evolutionary dynamics like complex networks or use of chaos game with evolutionary algorithms. Recently, the study of such phenomena is focused not only on the traditional trends but also on the understanding and analysis of principles, with the new intention of controlling and utilizing it toward real-world applications.

The aim of this session is to bring together people from fundamental research, experts from various applications of evolutionary algorithms and deterministic chaos, to develop mutual intersections and fusion. Also discussion of possible hybridization amongst them as well as real-life experiences with computer applications will be carried out to define new open problems in this interesting and fast growing field of research.

The core of this session is to attract best papers based on the actual state of art discussing occurrence of deterministic chaos inside evolutionary algorithms dynamics and its impact on algorithm performance as well as use of deterministic chaos systems as pseudorandom number generator in evolutionary algorithms.

Submission Guidelines for Special Session Papers

All submissions will be reviewed by experts in the field for its originality, significance, quality and clarity. Every submitted paper to CEC'14 will be reviewed according to rules and criteria of CEC 2014. Special session papers should be uploaded online through the paper submission website of IEEE WCCI 2014 by December 20, 2013. Please note that it is your responsibility to make sure that your paper intended for this special session are submitted to the right session. This can be done by selecting the corresponding special session name as the “main research topic” in submission.

The authors intended to contribute to IEEE WCCI 2014 Special Sessions are kindly recommended to follow the manuscript style information and templates of regular IEEE WCCI 2014 papers, as described here.

Please note that our Special Session is specifically and exclusively related to IEEE CEC 2014 which is one of the three conferences composing the IEEE WCCI 2014, i.e., IJCNN2014, FUZZ-IEEE2014, and IEEE CEC 2014.

When submitting your manuscripts, you are recommended to follow these steps:
1. Identify the conference associated to the Special Session they are interested in, by looking at the "Provisionally Accepted Special Session" list under the column called ID;
2. Go to the related conference submission website;
3. Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list;
4. Fill out the input fields, upload the pdf file and finalize the submission by December 20, 2013.

In any case of problems, please do not hesitate contact us: ivan.zelinka@vsb.cz.

PUBLICATION

All accepted papers will be published, in a substantially extended form, in the Springer series “Emergence, Complexity and Computation”, see http://www.springer.com/series/10624 or selected papers in special issue of IJUC (http://www.oldcitypublishing.com/IJUC/IJUC.html).

International Program Committee: 

  • Ajith Abraham, VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic
  • Andy Adamatzky, Unconventional, Computing Centre, UWE, Bristol
  • Juan Carlos Burguillo-Rial, Department of Telematics Engineering University of Vigo, Spain
  • Mohammed Chadli, University of Jules Verne, France
  • Guanrong Chen, City University of Hong Kong, China
  • Jouni Lampinen, University of Vaasa, Finland
  • René Lozi, Laboratoire J.A. Dieudonné, UMR CNRS 7351, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France
  • Hendrik Richter, HTWK Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, Germany
  • Ponnuthurai Nagaratnam Suganthan, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Vaclav Snášel, VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic
  • Roman Šenkeřík, Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Czech Republic
  • Ivan Zelinka, VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic

Tuesday 15 October 2013

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 "Evolutionary Computer Vision"

Computer vision is a major unsolved problem in computer science and engineering. Over the last decade there has been increasing interest in using evolutionary computation approaches to solve vision problems. Computer vision provides a range of problems of varying difficulty for the development and testing of evolutionary algorithms.

The theme proposed special session is the use of evolutionary computation for solving computer vision and image processing problems. This special session aims to bring together theories and applications of evolutionary computation to computer vision and image processing problems. Authors are invited to submit their original and unpublished work to this Special Session. Topics of interest include but are not limited to 

New theories and methods in different EC paradigms to computer vision and image processing including
  • Evolutionary algorithms such as Genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolutionary strategy and evolutionary programming;
  • Swarm Intelligence such as particle swarm optimisation, ant colony optimisation, and differential evolution; and
  • Other approaches such as learning classifier systems, harmony search, and artificial immune systems. Cross-fertilization of evolutionary computation and other techniques such as neural networks and fuzzy systems is also encouraged.
Applications in computer vision and image processing including
  • Edge detection in noisy images
  • Image segmentation in biological images
  • Automatic feature extraction, construction and selection in complex images
  • Object identification and scene analysis for medical applications
  • Object detection and classification in security scenarios
  • Handwritten digit recognition and detection
  • Vehicle plate detection
  • Face detection and recognition
  • Texture image analysis
  • Automatic target recognition in military services
  • Gesture identification and recognition
  • Robot vision
Important dates:
  • Paper Submission: 20 December 2013
  • Decision Notification: 15 March 2014
  • Camera-Ready Submission: 15 April 2014
Paper Submission:
You should follow the IEEE CEC/WCCI 2014 Submission Web Site. Special session papers are treated the same as regular conference papers.
Special Session Organizers:
Mengjie Zhang
School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington,
PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand.
Email: mengjie.zhang@ecs.vuw.ac.nz
Homepage: http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~mengjie/

Vic Ciesielski
School of Computer Science and Information Technology, RMIT University, City Campus,
GPO 2476V, VIC, Australia. Phone: +61-3-9925-2926; Fax: +61-3-9662-1617.
Email: vic.ciesielski@cs.rmit.edu.au
Homepage: http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~vc/

Mario Koeppen
Graduate School of Creative Informatics, Kyushu Institute of Technology, 680-4, Kawazu, Iizuka,
Fukuoka 820-8502 JAPAN. Phone: +81 948 29 7626; Fax: +81 948 29 7601.
Email: mkoeppen@ieee.org
Homepage: http://science.mkoeppen.com/


The IEEE CEC/WCCI 2014 Web site can be seen from here.

Call for papers: Special Session for WCCI 2014 "Recent Advances on Opposition-Based Learning & Applications"

Aim and Scope

Diverse forms of opposition are already existent virtually everywhere around us and the interplay between entities and opposite entities is fundamental for maintaining universal balance and harmony. However, it seems that there is a gap regarding oppositional thinking in engineering, mathematics and computer science. A better understanding of opposition could potentially establish new search, reasoning, optimization and learning schemes with a wide range of applications.

The main idea of opposition-based learning (OBL) is to consider opposite estimates, actions or states as an attempt to increase the coverage of the solution space and to reduce exploration time. OBL has already been applied to reinforcement learning, differential evolution, artificial neural network, particle swarm optimization, ant colony optimization, and genetic algorithm, etc. Example applications include large scale optimization problem, multi-objective optimization, traveling salesman problem, data mining, nonlinear system identification, image processing and understanding. However, finding killer applications for OBL is still a hard task that is heavily pursued.

The objective of this special session is to bring together the state-of-art research results and industrial applications on this topic. Contributed papers must be the original work of the authors and should not have been published or under consideration by other journals or conferences. Topics of primary interest include, but are not limited to:
  • Motivation and theory of opposition-based learning
  • Opposition-based optimization techniques
  • Reasoning and search strategies in opposition-based computing
  • Real-world applications in signal processing, pattern recognition, image understanding, robotics, social networking, etc.
  • Other methodologies and applications associated with opposition-based learning

Important Dates

Paper Submission: December 20, 2013
Paper Acceptance Notification: March 15, 2014
Final Paper Submission: April 15, 2014

Paper Submission

Manuscripts should be prepared according to the standard format and page limit of regular papers
specified in CEC 2014 webpage, and submitted via the official submission system of IEEE CEC 2014.
All papers submitted to special sessions will be subject to the same peer-review review procedure as
the regular papers. All accepted papers will be published in the CEC electronic proceedings and
included in the IEEE Xplore digital library, and indexed by EI Compendex.
Note: Please choose "SS7. EC07: Recent Advances on Opposition-Based Learning &
Applications" from the "S. SPECIAL SESSIONS" category as the main research topic of your paper
in submission.

Organizers

Dr. Shahryar Rahnamayan
Associate Professor
Department of Electrical, Computer, and Software Engineering
University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Canada
Email: shahryar.rahnamayan@uoit.ca

Dr. Hamid R. Tizhoosh
Professor
Department of Systems Design Engineering
University of Waterloo, Canada
Email: tizhoosh@uwaterloo.ca

Dr. Qingzheng Xu (corresponding)
Department of Information Service
Xi’an Communication Institute, China
Email: xuqingzheng@hotmail.com

Dr. Hui Wang
School of Information Engineering
Nanchang Institute of Technology, China
Email: huiwang@whu.edu.cn

Program Committee (to be continued)

Dr. Sakti Prasad Ghoshal
Department of Electrical Engineering
National Institute of Technology, India

Dr. Maoguo Gong
Key Lab of Intelligent Perception and Image Understanding of Ministry of Education
Xidian University, China

Dr. Zhijian Wu
State Key Lab of Software Engineering
Wuhan University, China

Dr. Lei Wang
School of Computer Science and Engineering
Xi'an University of Technology, China

Dr. Xiaozhi Gao
Department of Automation and Systems Technology
Aalto University, Finland

Dr. Millie Pant
Department of Applied Science and Engineering
Saharanpur Campus of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India

Dr. Mohammed El-Abd
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
American University of Kuwait, Kuwait

Dr. Hajira Jabeen
Computer Science Department
Iqra University, Pakistan

Dr. Wenlong Fu
School of Engineering and Computer Science
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Dr. Lining Zhang
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Dr. Muhammad Imran
Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology
University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Malaysia

Dr. Dongdong Yang
School of Computer Sciences and Engineering
Xi'an Univesity of Technology, China

Please check the CEC 2014 web site for additional information.

Monday 14 October 2013

Call for papers: Special Session for WCCI 2014 "Computational Intelligence and Games"

This special session is organized in association with the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Technical Committee on Games.

Aim

Games are an ideal domain to study computational intelligence methods in that they provide cheap, competitive, dynamic, reproducible environments suitable for testing new search algorithms, pattern-based evaluation methods, or learning concepts. They are also interesting to observe, fun to play, and very attractive to students. Additionally, there is a great potential for CI methods to improve the design and development of both computer games and non-digital games such as board games. This special session aims at gathering leading researchers and practitioners in this field who study and apply computational intelligence methods to computer games.

Scope

In general, any application of CI methods (reinforcement learning, supervised learning, unsupervised learning, fuzzy systems, game-tree methods etc) to games (card games, board games, mathematical games, action games, strategy games, role-playing games, arcade games, serious games etc).

  • Learning to play games
  • Imitating human players
  • Procedural content generation
  • Player/opponent modelling
  • Adaptation in games
  • Games as testbeds for CI algorithms
  • Comparative studies (e.g. CI versus human-designed players)
  • Results of open competitions
  • Multi-agent and multi-strategy learning
  • Coevolution in games
  • Results of game-based CI competitions
  • Automatic game testing

Submission Guidelines

Special session papers should be uploaded online through the paper submission website of IEEE WCCI 2014 by December 20, 2013. Please select the corresponding special session name ("Computational Intelligence and Games") as the “main research topic” in submission.

Organizers

Kyung-Joong Kim
Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Sejong University, Korea
kimkj@sejong.ac.kr

Sung-Bae Cho
Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, Yonsei University, Korea
sbcho@cs.yonsei.ac.kr

Call for papers: Special session for WCCI 2014 “Hybrid evolutionary computational methods for complex optimization problems”

Aim

Evolutionary computational methods play an important role in solving hard optimization problems from various real-world applications, such as scheduling, routing, constraint satisfaction, multi-objective optimization, time-varying, resource allocations, and many other areas. However, real-world optimizations are required to be more robust, more flexible, more responsive, more complex and more efficient. By solely using standard evolutionary computational methods, we may not reach the best solution within a limited time that is available for a real-world problem.

To achieve better results, hybrid evolutionary computational methods need to be developed by mixing the mechanisms of different optimization methods or by modifying standard optimization methods such as stochastic methods, heuristic and metaheuristic methods, deterministic methods, and response surface methodology based approaches. Literature shows that recently developed hybrid evolutionary computational methods are usually able to obtain better solutions with smaller computational time than those obtained by the standard evolutionary algorithms.

This special session aims to attract academia and industry researchers to report the latest development of hybrid evolutionary computational methods for solving complex optimization problems, and finally raise awareness on the relevant issues related to such innovative optimization methods.

Scope

Relevant areas include (but are not limited to) the followings:   

  • Methodology for development of hybrid evolutionary computational methods based on:
    • New variants of deterministic, heuristic and stochastic optimization methods
    • Hybridization of standard optimization methods and Metaheuristics
    • Other heuristic algorithms such as particle swarm optimization, bee colony optimization, ant colony optimization, simulated annealing
    • Parallel computing for complex optimization problems
    • Continuous and discrete global or local optimization methods
    • Multi-objective optimization methods
    • Transformation of problem formulation space for optimization
    • Time-varying optimization
  • Application areas:
    • Scheduling, resource allocation, graphs
    • Routing, network communication
    • Data mining, data processing, clustering
    • Signal processing
    • Supply chains, logistic problems
    • Optimal control, system modeling
    • Time series forecasting
    • Other real world hard optimization problems

 

Deadline

The deadline for submissions to this special session is 20 December 2013.

Information for Authors

1)    Information on the format and templates for papers can be found here:
       http://www.ieee-wcci2014.org/Paper%20Submission.htm
2)    Papers should be submitted via the IJCNN 2014 paper submission site:
       http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/cec2014/upload.php)
       Select the Special Session name in the Main Research topic dropdown list
4)    Fill out the input fields, upload the PDF file of your paper and finalize your submission by the deadline of December 20, 2013

Organisers

1. Dr. Kit Yan Chan
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Curtin University, Australia
Email: kit.chan@curtin.edu.au

2. Dr. Vasile Palade
Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Email: vasile.palade@cs.ox.ac.uk
       
3. Dr. Kevin Kam Fung Yuen
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China
Email: Kevin.Yuen@xjtlu.edu.cn

4. Associate Prof. Cedric Ka Fai Yiu
Department of Applied Mathematics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Email: macyiu@polyu.edu.hk