Awards and Challenges

Best Paper Award

Winner:

  • Overlooked Input for Word Learning: Examining the Role of Attention on Non-Target Objects During Object Labeling
    • Steve Zhang, Danlu Zhang, Melina Knabe, Chen Yu

Nominees:

  • Frequent, Scalable and Global Use of “Intelligent Onesies” to Quantify Newborns’ Spontaneous Movements in Natural Settings
    • Ori Ossmy, Hannah Rowan, Mohammad Saber Sotoodeh, Jazmine Hall, Georgina Donati, Gillian Forrester
  • No Robot Is an Island: An Always-On Cognitive Architecture for Social Context Awareness in Dynamic Environments
    • Dario Pasquali, Luca Garello, Giulia Belgiovine, Omar Eldardeer, Linda Lastrico, Francesco Rea, Fulvio Mastrogiovanni, Giulio Sandini, Alessandra Sciutti
  • Overlooked Input for Word Learning: Examining the Role of Attention on Non-Target Objects During Object Labeling
    • Steve Zhang, Danlu Zhang, Melina Knabe, Chen Yu

BabyBot Challenge

Babybot Challenge papers are expected to establish a strong link between developmental psychology and robotics and/or computational modeling

Winner:

  • MIMo Grows! Simulating Body and Sensory Development in a Multimodal Infant Model
    • Francisco Martín López, Miles Lenz, Marco Gabriele Fedozzi, Arthur Aubret, Jochen Triesch

Nominees:

  • Animal or Machine? Neuromodulated Emotions and Their Effect on Affinity
    • Theodora Hamilton-Holbrook, John Lones
  • Decentralized Collective World Model for Emergent Communication and Coordination
    • Kentaro Nomura, Tatsuya Aoki, Tadahiro Taniguchi, Takato Horii
  • MIMo Grows! Simulating Body and Sensory Development in a Multimodal Infant Model
    • Francisco Martín López, Miles Lenz, Marco Gabriele Fedozzi, Arthur Aubret, Jochen Triesch

BabyObserve Challenge

This Challenge is new, and its intention is to foster the community’s discoveries in research related to the development of cognition and learning that go beyond what is currently in focus.  BabyObserve Challenge papers are expected to introduce novel or “edge case” phenomena to the ICDL community from observations of child development, but also related mechanisms, interplays of skills, properties of (environmental and / or social) ecologies that promote it. 

Winner:

  • Parents and Children Jointly Create Multimodal Semantic Regularities During Naturalistic Toy Play
    • Melina Knabe, Jingwen Pang, Chen Yu 

Nominees:

  • Using Virtual Reality and Psychophysics to Test Embodied Cognitive Flexibility in Children with ADHD
    • Marianna Muszynska, Rosie Dalton, Paola Pinti, Sunny Kumar, Emily Farran, Ori Ossmy
  • Parents and Children Jointly Create Multimodal Semantic Regularities During Naturalistic Toy Play
    • Melina Knabe, Jingwen Pang, Chen Yu
  • Overlooked Input for Word Learning: Examining the Role of Attention on Non-Target Objects During Object Labeling
    • Steve Zhang, Danlu Zhang, Melina Knabe, Chen Yu

BabyBench Competition

BabyBench is a Multimodal Benchmark of Infant Behaviors for Developmental Artificial Intelligence. The goal of the competition is to devise learning algorithms that allow MIMo to obtain important milestones of cognitive development. We provide the embodiment, the simulation environments, and the evaluation metrics; all you need is to implement your ideas.
See also https://icdl2025.fel.cvut.cz/babybench/and https://babybench.github.io/2025/.

Winner:

  • Lucas Yang (University College London), Daniela Corbetta (The University of Tennessee), and Lorenzo Jamone (University College London) 

Nominees:

  • Lucas Yang (University College London), Daniela Corbetta (The University of Tennessee), and Lorenzo Jamone (University College London).
  • Magdalena Yordanova (Humboldt University of Berlin)
  • Xiaoyi Wu (University of California San Diego).

The BabyBot challenge, BabyObserver Challenge,  BabyBench Competition, and Best Paper Award are kindly sponsored by IEEE RAS TC Cognitive Robotics.

  • The winner of each category will get 150$ prize money from the TC. 
  • The awardees can claim the awards in the format of travel reimbursement, including registration, meals, airfare, hotel, etc., for which they will need to save the receipts. The winners should apply for the prize money within 45 days after the conference using these instructions.