67,542 research outputs found
A Theory of Cheap Control in Embodied Systems
We present a framework for designing cheap control architectures for embodied
agents. Our derivation is guided by the classical problem of universal
approximation, whereby we explore the possibility of exploiting the agent's
embodiment for a new and more efficient universal approximation of behaviors
generated by sensorimotor control. This embodied universal approximation is
compared with the classical non-embodied universal approximation. To exemplify
our approach, we present a detailed quantitative case study for policy models
defined in terms of conditional restricted Boltzmann machines. In contrast to
non-embodied universal approximation, which requires an exponential number of
parameters, in the embodied setting we are able to generate all possible
behaviors with a drastically smaller model, thus obtaining cheap universal
approximation. We test and corroborate the theory experimentally with a
six-legged walking machine. The experiments show that the sufficient controller
complexity predicted by our theory is tight, which means that the theory has
direct practical implications. Keywords: cheap design, embodiment, sensorimotor
loop, universal approximation, conditional restricted Boltzmann machineComment: 27 pages, 10 figure
The implications of embodiment for behavior and cognition: animal and robotic case studies
In this paper, we will argue that if we want to understand the function of
the brain (or the control in the case of robots), we must understand how the
brain is embedded into the physical system, and how the organism interacts with
the real world. While embodiment has often been used in its trivial meaning,
i.e. 'intelligence requires a body', the concept has deeper and more important
implications, concerned with the relation between physical and information
(neural, control) processes. A number of case studies are presented to
illustrate the concept. These involve animals and robots and are concentrated
around locomotion, grasping, and visual perception. A theoretical scheme that
can be used to embed the diverse case studies will be presented. Finally, we
will establish a link between the low-level sensory-motor processes and
cognition. We will present an embodied view on categorization, and propose the
concepts of 'body schema' and 'forward models' as a natural extension of the
embodied approach toward first representations.Comment: Book chapter in W. Tschacher & C. Bergomi, ed., 'The Implications of
Embodiment: Cognition and Communication', Exeter: Imprint Academic, pp. 31-5
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Simple environments fail as illustrations of intelligence: A review of R. Pfeifer and C. Scheier
The field of cognitive science has always supported a variety of modes of research, often polarised into those seeking high-level explanations of intelligence and those seeking low-level, perhaps even neuro-physiological, explanations. Each of these research directions permits, at least in part, a similar methodology based around the construction of detailed computational models, which justify their explanatory claims by matching behavioural data. We are fortunate at this time to witness the culmination of several decades of work from each of these research directions, and hopefully to find within them the basic ideas behind a complete theory of human intelligence. It is in this spirit that Rolf Pfeifer and Christian Scheier have written their book Understanding Intelligence. However, their aim is manifestly not to present an overview of all prior work in this field, but instead to argue forcefully for one particular interpretation – a synthetic approach, based around the explicit construction of autonomous agents. This approach is characterised by the Embodiment Hypothesis, which is presented as a complete framework for investigating intelligence, and exemplified by a number of computational models and robots to illustrate just how the field of cognitive science might develop in the future. We first provide an overview of their book, before describing some of our reservations about its contribution towards an understanding of intelligence
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Harmony and Technology Enhanced Learning
New technologies offer rich opportunities to support education in harmony. In this chapter we consider theoretical perspectives and underlying principles behind technologies for learning and teaching harmony. Such perspectives help in matching existing and future technologies to educational purposes, and to inspire the creative re-appropriation of technologies
Cyberspace As/And Space
The appropriate role of place- and space-based metaphors for the Internet and its constituent nodes and networks is hotly contested. This essay seeks to provoke critical reflection on the implications of place- and space-based theories of cyberspace for the ongoing production of networked space more generally. It argues, first, that adherents of the cyberspace metaphor have been insufficiently sensitive to the ways in which theories of cyberspace as space themselves function as acts of social construction. Specifically, the leading theories all have deployed the metaphoric construct of cyberspace to situate cyberspace, explicitly or implicitly, as separate space. This denies all of the ways in which cyberspace operates as both extension and evolution of everyday spatial practice. Next, it argues that critics of the cyberspace metaphor have confused two senses of space and two senses of metaphor. The cyberspace metaphor does not refer to abstract, Cartesian space, but instead expresses an experienced spatiality mediated by embodied human cognition. Cyberspace in this sense is relative, mutable, and constituted via the interactions among practice, conceptualization, and representation. The insights drawn from this exercise suggest a very different way of understanding both the spatiality of cyberspace and its architectural and regulatory challenges. In particular, they suggest closer attention to three ongoing shifts: the emergence of a new sense of social space, which the author calls networked space; the interpenetration of embodied, formerly bounded space by networked space; and the ways in which these developments alter, instantiate, and disrupt geographies of power
Quantifying the Evolutionary Self Structuring of Embodied Cognitive Networks
We outline a possible theoretical framework for the quantitative modeling of
networked embodied cognitive systems. We notice that: 1) information self
structuring through sensory-motor coordination does not deterministically occur
in Rn vector space, a generic multivariable space, but in SE(3), the group
structure of the possible motions of a body in space; 2) it happens in a
stochastic open ended environment. These observations may simplify, at the
price of a certain abstraction, the modeling and the design of self
organization processes based on the maximization of some informational
measures, such as mutual information. Furthermore, by providing closed form or
computationally lighter algorithms, it may significantly reduce the
computational burden of their implementation. We propose a modeling framework
which aims to give new tools for the design of networks of new artificial self
organizing, embodied and intelligent agents and the reverse engineering of
natural ones. At this point, it represents much a theoretical conjecture and it
has still to be experimentally verified whether this model will be useful in
practice.
The mindsized mashup mind isn’t supersized after all
I rather like Andy Clark’s book, Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension, but it certainly hasn’t put my mind at rest. As always Clark’s writing is uncomplicated and energetic, managing to make everything, from the physiology of the moving body, through an analysis of the scaffolding role, he maintains is, played by language, to the strategic use of representation, computation and control by the biological brain, both intelligible and interesting. And I have a great deal of sympathy with his main thesis: that we must consider the whole body, rather than merely the brain, as the locus where sensing and acting are synthesized and through which cognitive systems can engage with their world. But still I find that I have a couple of rather fundamental reservations, alongside a number of ancillary comments that arise from my own puzzlement with some – of what can at first glance seem – disarmingly simple claims
An infra-red finger tracking system used in the assessment and remediation of “graph-as-picture” misconceptions
The workshop presentation will describe a specialized ap- plication of Lee’s “Wiimote Whiteboard” [7] an infra-red camera based tracking system which uses the Nintendo Wii wireless remote control unit and Bluetooth. Young students wear a very small infra-red LED on their index finger with a forefinger/thumb operated micro-switch for produ- cing “mouse clicks”. This system is combined with a vertically mounted data projector or a horizontally mounted regular computer LCD display, creating a cost-effective large interactive touch surface. The system has a fast response time and has been used with primary school students in diagrammatic knowledge (graphicacy) assessment [4] and in interactive dynalinked diagrammatic applications [5]. These applications were de- signed to investigate the “graph-as-picture” misconception and they will be described and demonstrated at the workshop
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