BioInspired! So What? Now What!

It is our pleasure to announce a new call for papers for the third special issue of the Journal of Robotics in the year 2012.  The call for publications on cognitive and neural sciences related to robotic systems appeared to be a successful challenge.  Robotics has been widely applied for various fields such as automation and other control and engineering systems.  Recent developments of humanoid and human-like robots are a milestone in the field of robotics, and they can be a platform for breaking new ground of robotics applications for human-friendly medical and welfare systems.  Cognitive and learning aspects for such robots are, however, still underdeveloped compared to highly controlled mechanism of the recent robotic systems.

Similarly to the previous call of CNAR, the main challenges of this new call for special issue are the cognitive aspects of robotics, especially the neural and fuzzy basis of the human intelligence and the fundamental model of the human cognitive and motor functions from the brain sciences point of view.  We welcome papers focused on special and newest hardware and biocomputing implementations that enhance cognitive capabilities in the field of robotics.  We invite authors to present original research articles as well as review articles that will cross-fertilize the fields of cognitive sciences and robotics.  Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Cognitive aspects of robotics
• Neural network and fuzzy basis for robotic intelligence
• Current applications and future prospects of cognitive sciences for robotics
• Human-robot perceptions and interactions
• Biocomputing for cognitive computation for robotics
• New algorithms of computational intelligence for robotics
• New hardware implementations of cognitive algorithms in robotics
• Robotics for assisting physical and mental disability

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable:

• Manuscript Due Friday, 20 July 2012
• First Round of Reviews Friday, 12 October 2012
• Publication Date Friday, 7 December 2012

Thanks to A. M. G. Solo and the Biomimetics mailing list for the pointer!