CIIGAR Lab @ NC State
The CIIGAR Lab @ NCSU is a research laboratory housed in the Computer Science Department at North Carolina State University. The Lab is also affiliated with NCSU's Digital Games Research Center. The work we do in the CIIGAR Lab is multidisciplinary. Housed in a computer science department, we are primarily computer scientists; however, we view computers and algorithms as tools - tools that can help provide insights into cognition, behavior, learning, creative processes, and social interactions.
What does the CIIGAR acronym stand for? Well, that's a great question. We have two main research thrusts in our Lab: research on Reinforcement Learning (RL) and research with dogs. Depending on who you ask and what their focus is, they will tell you that CIIGAR stands for one of two things (or maybe it doesn't stand for anything at all, we'll leave that up to you to decide).
Canine Instruction Inspiring Gained Abilities in Reinforcement Learning
In our Reinforcement Learning Research, we aim to dramatically improve the ability to learning algorithms to rapdily learn from human trainers. Leveraging knoweldge from quantitative behavior analysis and direct experiences from developing systems for interacting with dogs, we're creating novel modles of RL that can benefit from the information inherrent in feedback provided by humans. These efforts span augmenting existing RL methods with behavior analytics models to deriving novel RL algorithms from first principles identified in quantitative behavior analytic models. For more details, check out our reinforcement learning research page.
Canine Instruction with Instrumented Gadgets Administering Rewards
In our canine research, the questions we ask address the processes human trainers use to effectively communicate and teach canines, and what those insights can tell us about the design of algorithms for machine learning. We additionally emphasize the design of hardware and software that mediates communication between canines and their handlers. Here, we examine how computers can provide more effective and efficient communication between humans and dogs, and how lessons learned about existing human-dog communication can enable more effective algorithm designs. There are more details and some project descriptions on our canine research page.
Computational Intelligence and Interactive GAmes Research
In early years, the CIIGAR lab also did quite a bit of research with games. With our increased focus on developing the Animal-Centered Computing community, work on games in the CIIGAR lab has fadaed dramatically in recent years. Check out our games research page for a historical description of our work.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Machine Learning
- Human Computer Interaction
- Cognitive (Neuro)Science
- Social Psychology
- Behavioral Psychology
Regardless of what you call the CIIGAR Lab, our research interests lie at the intersections of many disciplines both within Computer Science and elsewhere.
Thanks for visiting the CIIGAR Lab on the web. You're welcome to direct comments, questions, or inquiries to Dr. David L. Roberts, the Lab's director. Additionally, you can follow us on Facebook.