Machine Consciousness

During my last PhD I worked on Owen Holland's and Tom Troscianko's EPSRC-funded project to build a conscious robot (GR/S47946/01), which took place at the Department of Computing and Electronic Systems, University of Essex, and at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol. At Essex, Owen Holland, Rob Knight and Richard Newcombe developed the CRONOS robot and a virtual copy of this robot known as SIMNOS.

  

Figure 1. CRONOS and SIMNOS robots

My contribution to this project was the creation of a spiking neural simulator, SpikeStream, the construction of a neural network to control SIMNOS's eye movements, and the development of a new way of analyzing systems for consciousness that was used to make predictions about the network's phenomenal states.

More information about the CRONOS project can be found at www.cronosproject.net. More information about machine consciousness can be found at www.conscious-robots.com and I have written a review paper on machine consciousness that gives a good overview of the field. My contribution to this area is documented in my recent PhD thesis: The Development and Analysis of Conscious Machines and I have just started work on a book that will develop a general framework for the scientific study of human and machine consciousness.