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A PAPER SUMMARY AND BRIEF REVIEW OF . . .

Petitagé: A Case Study in Developmental Robotics

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Stojanov et al, 1996a

The paper “AI (re-) discovers behaviorism and other analogies” by Stojanov et al was displayed at the 3rd World’s Behaviorist Congress.

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Brooks in the 80’s

Something wrong?AI topics are isolated!

Combined (Shakey) – poor results

Brooks response?

The resulting effect on the AI-behaviourism community?

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Stojanov et al, 1996a

Predicts a cognitive revolution!

Says his prediction was correct.

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Brooks quotation

“There are no variables ... that need instantiation in the reasoning process. There are no rules which need to be selected through pattern matching. There are no choices to be made. To a large extent the state of the world determines the action of the Creature”

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Evolution of the S.A.: “Special Branches”

Pure reactive systemsReactive systems plus some memory

structuresEclectic architecturesInteractionist approaches

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Stojanov’s original architecture

a) The original architecture for an autonomous agent

b) Architecture augmented with the Expectancy Module (EM).

Expectancy Module forms a table made up of triples of the form: (Sensory_readings_at_t, Action_taken_at_t, expected_sensory_readings_at_t+1)

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The basic petitage architecture

Perceptual Aliasing: The problem and how to solve it?

The architecture:

Simulation software screen snapshot, and two examples of 2D environments.

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Schema for the basic petitage architecture

If A={a1, a2, ..., an}

Schema (a sequence of elementary actions) could be..

s= a2 a1 a5 a7 a1 a1 a1

Percepts could be..P={p1, p2,..., pj}

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Example of Petitage Architecture

A robot capable of 4 elementary actions (move forward, move backward, move left, move right)

A={f, b, l, r}

If we suppose that it has 12 sonars each with 10 different levels of output, and a sensor for detection of the goal place (e.g. yes-energy, no-energy) than the number of elements in set P would be 2*1012.

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Inborn Schema & Enabled Schema Instances

S = ai.ak. … Inborn Schema: a string of elementary actions

characterised by length and relative ordering of actions.

S= fffllffr will become.. S = fffff

e.g. when the robot is trying to perform the inborn schema in the corridor

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Emotional Context..

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Comparison to other work..

Stojanovs largely influence by Piaget..

Other similar work is that of Gary Drescher’s

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Stojanov concludes

Increasing recognition of the relevance of Piaget’s work..

Significant developments in research (e.g. Kismet)

Growing interest in entertainment robotics (AIBO, iRobot, my real baby etc.)

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Review of the paper

My personal take on the paper..