Postdoctoral Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology
fleischer@nsi.edu
http://www.nsi.edu/users/fleischer

Robotics is a natural complement to computational neuroscience. Neural models that are embodied in real world devices can uncover important aspects of neurological function that can be swept under the carpet in purely virtual models. And neuroscience models can in turn help build more capable robots. A better understanding of how animals learn motor control and cognitive abilities will produce a new set of tools for building robots that need those same skills. I am working on a large scale (~100k neuronal units, 1.3M synapses) neural model of the hippocampus and selected cortical areas which is embodied in a real-world device. The model is being used to investigate hippocampal function during navigation tasks, and how the anatomy of those connections contribute to the formation and retrieval of episodic memories. I have been working on a soccer-playing robot based on the Segway scooter that implements a neuronal simulation for visual processing and uses algorithms based on psychophysical data to perform obstacle avoidance and ball-handling, as part of a newly-proposed RoboCup league where each team consists of both human players, mounted on Segway scooters, and Segway robots. This new league highlights the problem of human-robot interaction, which has become an important research topic since robots are becoming more common in the everyday world. Previously I have worked in the area of AI robotics, investigating issues of reliable landmark detection using predictive sensor models, symbol grounding on robotic agents, and route communication between robots.

Education:

• 1997 BS Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University
• 1999 MS Robotics at Colorado State University
• 2003 PhD Computer Science at The University of Manchester, U.K.

Awards and Honors:

• 2002-2003 DAAD Visiting Fellow at the University of Freiburg, Germany
• 1999-2002 ATLAS Scholar at The University of Manchester, UK
• 1998-1999 Maxtor Fellow at Colorado State University

Selected Publications:

Jason Fleischer, Botond Szatmáry, Donald Hutson, Douglas Moore, James Snook, Gerald Edelman, and Jeffrey Krichmar. A neurally controlled robot competes and cooperates with humans in Segway Soccer. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp.3673-3678, 2006.

Jeffrey Krichmar, Anil Seth, Douglas Nitz, Jason Fleischer, and Gerald Edelman. Spatial navigation and causal analysis in a brain-based device modeling cortical-hippocampal interactions. Neuroinformatics, 3(3):197-222, 2005.

Jason Fleischer. Imitation is not enough for lexicon learning In From Animals to Animats VIII. Proceedings of the Eigth International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, pp.477-486, 2004.

Jason Fleischer, Stephen Marsland, and Jonathan Shapiro. Sensory Anticipation for Autonomous Selection of Robot Landmarks. In, M.V. Butz, O. Siguard, P. Gerard (Eds.), Anticipitory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems: Foundations, Theories, and Systems, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 2684, pp.201-221, 2003.

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