Can Development Be Designed? What we May Learn from the Cog Project

Neither `design' nor `evolutionary' approaches to building behavior-based robots feature a role for development in the genesis of behavioral organization. However, the new Cog Project aims to build a humanoid robot that will display behavioral abilities observed in human infants and proposes making use of ideas from evolution and developmental psychology in its design. This paper o ers a provisional evaluation of this work from a developmental perspective, to show how developmental study may o er not only a source of phenomena for modelling but also a method that contributes to our understanding of how self-organization works. The design methodology that underlies Cog confronts problems with selection and interpretation of component behaviors, and how these may be better understood through appropriate developmental study is illustrated. Principles that underlie the design of Cog are shown to exhibit interesting convergences with infant mechanisms, based on the signi cance of...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1995
• Where: ECAL
• Authors: Julie C. Rutkowska
• Keywords: Arti Cial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Cog Confronts Problems, Developmental Study, ECAL 1995