The Nomination for Modeling Hydra Behavior Using Methods Founded in Behavior-Based Robotics by Malin Aktius

We hereby would like to nominate Malin Aktius' attached masters thesis "Modeling Hydra Behavior Using Methods Founded in Behavior-Based Robotics" for the SAIS AI Master's Thesis Award. The thesis was defended at Chalmers University of Technology, Department of Applied Mechanics, in 2007 (masters thesis 2007:17, supervised by Mats Nordahl).

Malin's work uses a combination of AI teachniques to model the behavior of a biological organism, the Hydra, in simulation. Individual behaviors were modeled using neural and evolutionary computing techniques to match quantitative data available from previously conducted experiments on the animal. The interaction of individual behaviors was modeled using a colony-style behavior-based architecture and was shown to match the Hydra's behavior properties such as latency, activation thresholds, habituation, and duration of the individual behaviors.

Our reasons for nominating this thesis are the following:

the thesis documents the innovative combination of different AI techniques in the careful modeling of actual behavioral data available for a real animal (which is rare in AI research)
the work was carried out very independently
a summary of the work has been published (complete reference below) and presented at the 9th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL).
Aktius, M., Nordahl, M. & Ziemke, T. (2007). A Behavior-Based Model of the Hydra, Phylum Cnidaria. In: Almeida e Costa, F. et al (eds) Advances in Artificial Life, ECAL 2007 (pp. 1024-1033). Berlin: Springer Verlag (Lecture Notes in Artifical Intelligence 4648).

Malin Aktius is now a PhD student at the University of Skövde, working in a European project on biologically inspired cognitive robotics.

Mats Nordahl, Göteborg University & Chalmers (masters thesis supervisor)
Tom Ziemke, University of Skövde (PhD supervisor)