8,294 research outputs found
Embodied Evolution in Collective Robotics: A Review
This paper provides an overview of evolutionary robotics techniques applied
to on-line distributed evolution for robot collectives -- namely, embodied
evolution. It provides a definition of embodied evolution as well as a thorough
description of the underlying concepts and mechanisms. The paper also presents
a comprehensive summary of research published in the field since its inception
(1999-2017), providing various perspectives to identify the major trends. In
particular, we identify a shift from considering embodied evolution as a
parallel search method within small robot collectives (fewer than 10 robots) to
embodied evolution as an on-line distributed learning method for designing
collective behaviours in swarm-like collectives. The paper concludes with a
discussion of applications and open questions, providing a milestone for past
and an inspiration for future research.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl
Enaction-Based Artificial Intelligence: Toward Coevolution with Humans in the Loop
This article deals with the links between the enaction paradigm and
artificial intelligence. Enaction is considered a metaphor for artificial
intelligence, as a number of the notions which it deals with are deemed
incompatible with the phenomenal field of the virtual. After explaining this
stance, we shall review previous works regarding this issue in terms of
artifical life and robotics. We shall focus on the lack of recognition of
co-evolution at the heart of these approaches. We propose to explicitly
integrate the evolution of the environment into our approach in order to refine
the ontogenesis of the artificial system, and to compare it with the enaction
paradigm. The growing complexity of the ontogenetic mechanisms to be activated
can therefore be compensated by an interactive guidance system emanating from
the environment. This proposition does not however resolve that of the
relevance of the meaning created by the machine (sense-making). Such
reflections lead us to integrate human interaction into this environment in
order to construct relevant meaning in terms of participative artificial
intelligence. This raises a number of questions with regards to setting up an
enactive interaction. The article concludes by exploring a number of issues,
thereby enabling us to associate current approaches with the principles of
morphogenesis, guidance, the phenomenology of interactions and the use of
minimal enactive interfaces in setting up experiments which will deal with the
problem of artificial intelligence in a variety of enaction-based ways
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.
On the Role of AI in the Ongoing Paradigm Shift within the Cognitive Sciences
This paper supports the view that the ongoing shift from orthodox to embodied-embedded cognitive science has been significantly influenced by the experimental results generated by AI research. Recently, there has also been a noticeable shift toward enactivism, a paradigm which radicalizes the embodied-embedded approach by placing autonomous agency and lived subjectivity at the heart of cognitive science. Some first steps toward a clarification of the relationship of AI to this further shift are outlined. It is concluded that the success of enactivism in establishing itself as a mainstream cognitive science research program will depend less on progress made in AI research and more on the development of a phenomenological pragmatics
Scalable Co-Optimization of Morphology and Control in Embodied Machines
Evolution sculpts both the body plans and nervous systems of agents together
over time. In contrast, in AI and robotics, a robot's body plan is usually
designed by hand, and control policies are then optimized for that fixed
design. The task of simultaneously co-optimizing the morphology and controller
of an embodied robot has remained a challenge. In psychology, the theory of
embodied cognition posits that behavior arises from a close coupling between
body plan and sensorimotor control, which suggests why co-optimizing these two
subsystems is so difficult: most evolutionary changes to morphology tend to
adversely impact sensorimotor control, leading to an overall decrease in
behavioral performance. Here, we further examine this hypothesis and
demonstrate a technique for "morphological innovation protection", which
temporarily reduces selection pressure on recently morphologically-changed
individuals, thus enabling evolution some time to "readapt" to the new
morphology with subsequent control policy mutations. We show the potential for
this method to avoid local optima and converge to similar highly fit
morphologies across widely varying initial conditions, while sustaining fitness
improvements further into optimization. While this technique is admittedly only
the first of many steps that must be taken to achieve scalable optimization of
embodied machines, we hope that theoretical insight into the cause of
evolutionary stagnation in current methods will help to enable the automation
of robot design and behavioral training -- while simultaneously providing a
testbed to investigate the theory of embodied cognition
Integration of Action and Language Knowledge: A Roadmap for Developmental Robotics
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