An exploration of embodied intelligence and its implications points toward a theory of intelligence in general; with case studies of intelligent systems in ubiquitous computing, business and management, human memory, and robotics. How could the body influence our thinking when it seems obvious that the brain controls the body? In How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard demonstrate that thought is not independent of the body but is tightly constrained, and at the same time enabled, by it. They argue that the kinds of thoughts we are capable of have their foundation in our embodiment-in our morphology and the material properties of our bodies. This crucial notion of embodiment underlies fundamental changes in the field of artificial intelligence over the past two decades, and Pfeifer and Bongard use the basic methodology of artificial intelligence-"understanding by building"-to describe their insights. If we understand how to design and build intelligent systems, they reason, we will better understand intelligence in general. In accessible, nontechnical language, and using many examples, they introduce the basic concepts by building on recent developments in robotics, biology, neuroscience, and psychology to outline a possible theory of intelligence. They illustrate applications of such a theory in ubiquitous computing, business and management, and the psychology of human memory. Embodied intelligence, as described by Pfeifer and Bongard, has important implications for our understanding of both natural and artificial intelligence.

How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence

The metaphor of a "cognitive map"has attracted wide interest since it was first proposed in the late 1940s Researchers from fields as diverse as psychology, geography, and urban planning have explored how humans process and use spatial information, often with the view of explaining why people make wayfinding errors or what makes one person a better navigator than another Cognitive psychologists have broken navigation down into its component steps and shown it to be an interplay of neurocognitive functions, such as "spatial updating"and "reference frames"or "perception-action couplings"But there has also been an intense debate among biologists over whether animals have cognitive maps or have other forms of internal spatial representations that allow them to behave as if they did Yet until now, little has been done to relate research on human and non-human subjects in this area In Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and Other Spatial Processes Reginald Golledge brings together a distinguished group of scholars to offer a unique and comprehensive survey of current research in these diverse fields Among the common themes they discover is the psychologists' "black box"approach, in which the internal mechanisms of spatial perception and route planning are modeled or constructed, like metaphors, based on the behavioral evidence Cognitive neuroscientists, on the other hand, have attempted to discover the neurocognitive basis for spatial behavior (They have shown, for example, that damage in the hippocampus system invariably impairs the ability of animals and humans to learn about, remember, and navigate through environments, and studies in humans show that neurons in this system code for location, direction, and distance, thereby providing the elements needed for a mapping system) Artificial intelligence and robotics theorists attempt to construct intelligent mapping systems using computer technology In these areas, there is growing evidence that, as in human wayfinding processes, useful representations cannot be achieved without sacrificing completeness and precision Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and Other Spatial Processes offers not only state-of-the-art knowledge about "wayfinding, "but also represents a point of departure for future interdisciplinary studies "The more we know," concludes volume editor Reginald Golledge, "about how humans or other species can navigate, wayfind, sense, record and use spatial information, the more effective will be the building of future guidance systems, and the more natural it will be for human beings to understand and control those systems"

Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and Other Spatial Processes

Developmental robotics is an emerging field located at the intersection of robotics, cognitive science and developmental sciences. This paper elucidates the main reasons and key motivations behind the convergence of fields with seemingly disparate interests, and shows why developmental robotics might prove to be beneficial for all fields involved. The methodology advocated is synthetic and two-pronged: on the one hand, it employs robots to instantiate models originating from developmental sciences; on the other hand, it aims to develop better robotic systems by exploiting insights gained from studies on ontogenetic development. This paper gives a survey of the relevant research issues and points to some future research directions.

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Developmental robotics: a survey

This paper posits the usefulness of mental shifts of scale and perspective in thinking and communicating about spatial relations, and describes two experimental techniques for researching such cognitive activities. The first example involves mentally expanding a hand-sized piece of entangled string, a knot, so that following a portion of the string into a crossing resembles the act of walking along a path and over a bridge. The second example involves transforming experience and conceptions of the large-scale environment to small-scale representations through the act of mapmaking, and then translating the map to depictions of street-level views. When used in the context of clinical research methodologies, these techniques can help to elicit multimodal expressions of conceived topological relationships and geographical detail, with particular attention to individual differences.

Spatial Cognition II

This essay presents and discusses the state of the art in studies of desert ant (Cataglyphis) navigation. In dealing with behavioural performances, neural mechanisms, and ecological functions these studies ultimately aim at an evolutionary understanding of the insect's navigational toolkit: its skylight (polarization) compass, its path integrator, its view-dependent ways of recognizing places and following landmark routes, and its strategies of flexibly interlinking these modes of navigation to generate amazingly rich behavioural out- puts. The general message is thatCataglyphis uses path integration as an egocentric guideline to acquire con- tinually updated spatial information about places and routes. Hence, it relies on procedural knowledge, and largely context-dependent retrieval of such knowledge, rather than on all-embracing geocentred representations of space.

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Desert ant navigation: how miniature brains solve complex tasks

http://www.imls.uzh.ch/static/CMS_publications/neuhauss/literatur_labhart/pdf/Lambrinos_etal_RobAutSyst2000.pdf

A mobile robot employing insect strategies for navigation

One of the fundamental abilities required in autonomous agents is homing. Natural agents—for instance, desert ants—solve the homing problem mainly by using path integration within an egocentric frame of reference. When employing such a mechanism, compass information for determining direction is necessary, and the precision of the compass will have a crucial effect on the precision of homing. For deriving compass information, certain insects use the pattern of polarized light in the sky that arises due to scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere (polarized light compass). The analysis of skylight polarization is mediated by specialized photoreceptors and neurons in the visual system. Inspired by the insect's polarized light compass, we have constructed a polarization compass that was employed successfully on the mobile robot Sahabot. Three models for extracting compass information from the polarization pattern of the sky were tested. In this article, we describe the navigation system and report results of ...

An autonomous agent navigating with a polarized light compass

Many insects exploit skylight polarization for visual compass orientation or course control. As found in crickets, the peripheral visual system (optic lobe) contains three types of polarization-sen...

/pdf/polarized-skylight-navigation-in-insects-model-and-3ybbu4als4.pdf

Polarized Skylight Navigation in Insects: Model and Electrophysiology of e-Vector Coding by Neurons in the Central Complex

Insect Strategies of Visual Homing in Mobile Robots

The ability to navigate in a complex environment is crucial for both animals and robots. Many animals use a combination of strategies to return to significant locations in their environment. For example, the desert ant Gata glyphis is able to explore its desert habitat for hundreds of meters while foraging and return back to its nest precisely and on a straight line. The three main strategies that Gata glyphis is using to accomplish this task are path integration, visual piloting and systematic search (Wehner et al., 1996). In this study, we use the autonomous agents approach (Pfeifer, 1996) to gain additional insights into the navigation behavior of Gata glyphis. Inspired by the insect's navigation system we have constructed mechanisms for path integration and visual piloting that were successfully employed on the mobile robot Sahabot 2. The results of the navigation experiments indicate that a combination of these two mechanisms is capable to guide the agent precisely back to the target position.

Dimitrios Lambrinos

Papers

A mobile robot employing insect strategies for navigation

An autonomous agent navigating with a polarized light compass

Polarized Skylight Navigation in Insects: Model and Electrophysiology of e-Vector Coding by Neurons in the Central Complex

Insect Strategies of Visual Homing in Mobile Robots

Modeling ant navigation with an autonomous agent