A developmental memorybased and embodied cognitive architecture

1
A developmental memory-based and embodied
cognitive architecture

• Introduction
• A novel cognitive robotic architecture has been
  developed based on the following thesis
• Cognition in biological agents may be described
  as being fundamentally concerned with the
  manipulation and utilisation of memory.
• This results in the desirable properties of
  autonomous and adaptive behaviour.
• The Autonomous Mental Development methodology 4
  provides a means of implementation.
• The MBC Architecture represents gained knowledge
  explicitly, which facilitates detailed
  examination of developed behaviours.
• The MBC Architecture
• The Memory-Based Cognitive (MBC) architecture is
  based on the cognit concept from the Network
  Memory theory 2, in particular their functional
  nature
• shared use in memory and perception,
• overlapping representations,
• the discreet representation of associations
  facilitates a more detailed investigation of the
  course of development of behaviours to a greater
  extent than neural-computational approaches will
  allow.

• The development of hierarchies based on
  environmental interaction is central it allows
  the potential generalisation of behavioural
  competencies through the use of lower level
  association constructs in multiple higher level
  associations. This provides a means for the
  development of both behavioural sequences (rather
  than single time-step actions), and the
  representation of complex sensory constructs
  (instead of individual sensory readings).
• Architectural features
• No environmental information is encoded a priori.
• A temporal aspect to behaviour generation is
  enabled through the implementation of activation
  functions for associations.
• Independent modification of processing enabled,
  as the high-level execution scheme applies
  irrespective of actual hardware embodiment.

• In the current implementation, two hierarchies
  are explicitly defined, but informal hierarchy
  development is desired and is to be implemented.
• Use of an OOP language facilitates the rule-based
  architecture intention is to create a generic
  library for easy implementation with a wide range
  of physical systems.
• Discussion
• Whilst the computational cost (and hence
  real-time performance) of an explicit
  representation of associations may be high, it is
  argued that the explanatory power that this
  affords enables this approach to make a useful
  contribution to the discussion of theoretical
  issues.
• Regarding the analysis of behaviour, the overt
  behaviour of the embodied architecture provides a
  context for the analysis of the completely
  accessible internal processes. Techniques from
  artificial ethology 3 may be used to provide
  metrics for the characterisation of behaviour.

• Applications
• The first behaviour developed has been simple
  obstacle avoidance in an enclosed environment.
• Once refined, the MBC architecture is to be
  applied to the problem of spatial information
  representation 1 an open question in animal
  cognition research.
• More generally, issues regarding cognitive
  development within the constraints of embodiment
  may be explored using this architecture, to which
  it may be more suited than artificial neural
  network approaches.