1. Proposal number: 2 2. Should this proposal be considered for the Best Proposal prize? (yes/no): Yes 3. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the overall organization/clarity of the proposal? (1-10): 10 4. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the overall project idea? (1-10) : 9 * Overall, is the proposal clear, concise, and well-organized? The proposal is clear at most times and is concise enough for the purpose that it serves. The only part that took a couple times to read through to get a full understanding was when the theoretical model notation was being described. As far as conciseness is concerned, the proposal does not bother repeating information that has already been given and only talks about topics that are relevant to the project. It also gives enough information about what is being done so that is easily understood. This project is organized quite well. The flow of information given to the reader makes sense. The reader is briefly introduced to the general idea of the project and is given a quick rundown of the organization of the paper. The reader then learns about relevant studies in psychology as well as robotics and is finally introduced to the actual approach this project will take. The evaluation methodology is also explained in the approach. * Does the proposal meet the posted proposal guidelines? This project meets most of the proposal guidelines, though it is missing a few minor details. One such detail is that I fail to see how the proposal is demonstrated to be necessary. What I mean by this is that a practical application for the knowledge gained from this project wasn't given. Also, it wasn't particularly clear how the project could be improved based on its results. * How does the project idea fit within the framework of Developmental Robotics? This idea clearly fits in the framework of developmental robotics. First off, it involves solving a task of organizing objects, which is something that children can do. Secondly, this idea builds upon previous work that has been done in the field by doing similar experiments on a larger scale. Another reason that it fits in the framework is that behaviors are being used to ground representations of objects in order to organize them. * Describe what you like BEST about the project idea. I really liked how thoroughly the proposal explained their idea. The steps necessary to complete the project are clearly defined and seem reasonable. As far as the idea itself is concerned, I like that they are conducting trials with so many different objects. A research group can run tests with a few objects and claim that their results are excellent, but the results don't mean very much because objects can vary to extreme extents and could cause their algorithms to fail on untested objects. This project works with objects of many different types (20) and large numbers of objects (100 total). * Describe what you like LEAST about the project idea. This idea was a pretty good idea and there is not much to dislike about it. However, I think that this project does not really give any practical applications of the research. It solves a good problem, but immediately I do not see how this can be used in a real-life situation. * Does it seem doable in the remaining time? There may be a slight time crunch in order to get this project done in the remaining time. I think that being able to gather trial data with the robot and having to watch it will take a large amount of time. Also, getting the robot for the amount of the time necessary may be a challenge because other groups want to use the robot for their projects. I do not know exactly how fast the authors are at programming, but if they are dedicated I feel that they can accomplish most if not all of the programming in a reasonable amount of time. * Does it seem too difficult? I believe that this project is not too difficult for a time frame between one and two months. The only challenges that I can foresee are getting the robot for enough time to complete and record all trials as well as being able to develop all of the algorithms properly. There are also seem to be a lot of simultaneous goals to achieve, but not enough to make this project impossible. * Are there any major details left out? There are no major details left out. * Does the idea rely upon technologies that are not currently available? The software and technologies are clearly laid out and they do not relate upon technologies that are currently unavailable. * Do you have any suggestions for improvement? Overall, this is a pretty solid proposal. There are some minor editing details that can be taken care of, but the idea is clearly defined. Some errors include: 1) the end of the second paragraph on page 3 uses “then” instead of “than”, 2) the last sentence of the fifth page is missing a period, and 3) “findings” in the phrase “capable of findings” on page six should be “finding”. * Do you have any suggestions for related work that should be cited? This proposal's related work was quite thorough and extensively described research that has been done concerning object recognition in animals. However, most of this research seemed to pertain to visual features of an object. This project includes categorizing objects by auditory, proprioceptive and tactile sensory modalities, and I think more research about categorizing objects by non-visual modalities with animals could be included, if possible.