The project
The European project MindRACES — “From Reactive to Anticipatory Cognitive Embodied Systems” — kicks off, funded under the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) of the European Union. The total budget is approximately 350,000 EUR.
The research
MindRACES investigates the mechanisms of knowledge anticipation and cognitive maps in artificial systems. The goal is to understand and replicate the ability of biological organisms to anticipate future events based on past experience, moving from purely reactive architectures to anticipatory systems.
The partnership includes ISTC-CNR in Rome (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies) and five European research centres.
The AKIRA framework
noze’s main contribution to the project is the development of AKIRA, a multithreaded C++ software framework designed for the simulation of cognitive agents. The technical features:
- Multithreaded architecture for parallel management of cognitive processes
- Implementation of Fuzzy Logic for reasoning under uncertainty
- Fuzzy Cognitive Maps for modelling causal relationships between concepts
The design of AKIRA is the result of collaboration between Giovanni Pezzulo (ISTC-CNR) and Gianguglielmo Calvi and Stefano Noferi from noze. The project marks noze’s entry into European artificial intelligence research, a field that will become central to the company’s evolution.