Behavioral And Cognitive Robotics An Adaptive Perspective

This book describes how to create robots capable to develop the behavioral and cognitive skills required to perform a task through machine learning methods. It focuses on model-free approaches with minimal human intervention in which the behavior used by the robots to solve their task and the way in which such behavior is produced is discovered by the adaptive process automatically, i.e. it is not specified by the experimenter. The book, which is targeted toward researchers, PhD and Master students with an interest in machine learning and robotics: (i) introduces autonomous robots, evolutionary algorithms, reinforcement learning algorithms, and learning by demonstration methods, (ii) uses concrete experiments to illustrate the fundamental aspects of embodied intelligence, (iii) provides theoretical and practical knowledge, including tutorials and exercises, and (iv) provides an integrated review of recent research in this area carried within partially separated research communities.

The current state of the art in cognitive robotics, covering the challenges of building AI-powered intelligent robots inspired by natural cognitive systems. A novel approach to building AI-powered intelligent robots takes inspiration from the way natural cognitive systems—in humans, animals, and biological systems—develop intelligence by exploiting the full power of interactions between body and brain, the physical and social environment in which they live, and phylogenetic, developmental, and learning dynamics. This volume reports on the current state of the art in cognitive robotics, offering the first comprehensive coverage of building robots inspired by natural cognitive systems. Contributors first provide a systematic definition of cognitive robotics and a history of developments in the field. They describe in detail five main approaches: developmental, neuro, evolutionary, swarm, and soft robotics. They go on to consider methodologies and concepts, treating topics that include commonly used cognitive robotics platforms and robot simulators, biomimetic skin as an example of a hardware-based approach, machine-learning methods, and cognitive architecture. Finally, they cover the behavioral and cognitive capabilities of a variety of models, experiments, and applications, looking at issues that range from intrinsic motivation and perception to robot consciousness. Cognitive Robotics is aimed at an interdisciplinary audience, balancing technical details and examples for the computational reader with theoretical and experimental findings for the empirical scientist.

Featuring an international team of authors, Neural Network Perspectives on Cognition and Adaptive Robotics presents several approaches to the modeling of human cognition and language using neural computing techniques. It also describes how adaptive robotic systems can be produced using neural network architectures. Covering a wide range of mainstream area and trends, each chapter provides the latest information from a different perspective.

The development and use of robotics is affecting all aspects of modern life. There is a demand not only for robots that can move, interact, learn, and act in real-time dynamic and unconstrained environments but also for those that can interact smoothly and safely with the actions and movements of people within the same environments. In addition to managing complex motor coordination, these robots also require the ability to acquire and represent knowledge, deal with uncertainty at different operational levels, learn, reason, adapt, and have the autonomy to make intelligent decisions and act upon them. They should be able to learn from interaction, anticipate the outcomes of actions, acquire experiences and use them as required for future activities. Cognitive robotics is the interdisciplinary term used to describe robots that merge all these features and capabilities in their hardware and software architectures.

A comprehensive overview of an interdisciplinary approach to robotics that takes direct inspiration from the developmental and learning phenomena observed in children's cognitive development. Developmental robotics is a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to robotics that is directly inspired by the developmental principles and mechanisms observed in children's cognitive development. It builds on the idea that the robot, using a set of intrinsic developmental principles regulating the real-time interaction of its body, brain, and environment, can autonomously acquire an increasingly complex set of sensorimotor and mental capabilities. This volume, drawing on insights from psychology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, and robotics, offers the first comprehensive overview of a rapidly growing field. After providing some essential background information on robotics and developmental psychology, the book looks in detail at how developmental robotics models and experiments have attempted to realize a range of behavioral and cognitive capabilities. The examples in these chapters were chosen because of their direct correspondence with specific issues in child psychology research; each chapter begins with a concise and accessible overview of relevant empirical and theoretical findings in developmental psychology. The chapters cover intrinsic motivation and curiosity; motor development, examining both manipulation and locomotion; perceptual development, including face recognition and perception of space; social learning, emphasizing such phenomena as joint attention and cooperation; language, from phonetic babbling to syntactic processing; and abstract knowledge, including models of number learning and reasoning strategies. Boxed text offers technical and methodological details for both psychology and robotics experiments.

The "intelligence" of traditional artificial intelligence systems is notoriously narrow and inflexible--incapable of adapting to the constantly changing circumstances of the real world. Although traditional artificial intelligence systems can be successful in narrowly prescribed domains, they are inappropriate for dynamic, complex domains, such as autonomous robot navigation.**This book proposes an alternative methodology for designing intelligent systems based on a model of intelligence as adaptive behavior. The author describes an experiment in computational neuroethology--the computer modeling of neuronal control of behavior--in which the nervous system for an artificial insect is modeled. The experiment demonstrates that simple, complete intelligent agents are able to cope with complex, dynamic environments--suggesting that adaptive models of intelligence, based on biological bases of adaptive behavior, may prove to be very useful in the design of intelligent, autonomous systems. Provides a lucid critique of traditional artificial intelligence research programs Presents new methodology for the construction autonomous agents, which has implications for mobile robotics Of interest to researchers in a variety of fields: artificial intelligence, neural networks, robotics, cognitive science, and neuroscience

New research on the adaptive behavior of natural and synthetic agents.

August 8-12, 1994, Brighton, England From Animals to Animats 3 brings together research intended to advance the fron tier of an exciting new approach to understanding intelligence. The contributors represent a broad range of interests from artificial intelligence and robotics to ethology and the neurosciences. Unifying these approaches is the notion of "animat" -- an artificial animal, either simulated by a computer or embodied in a robot, which must survive and adapt in progressively more challenging environments. The 58 contributions focus particularly on well-defined models, computer simulations, and built robots in order to help characterize and compare various principles and architectures capable of inducing adaptive behavior in real or artificial animals. Topics include: - Individual and collective behavior. - Neural correlates of behavior. - Perception and motor control. - Motivation and emotion. - Action selection and behavioral sequences. - Ontogeny, learning, and evolution. - Internal world models and cognitive processes. - Applied adaptive behavior. - Autonomous robots. - Heirarchical and parallel organizations. - Emergent structures and behaviors. - Problem solving and planning. - Goal-directed behavior. - Neural networks and evolutionary computation. - Characterization of environments. A Bradford Book