Active perception: a sensorimotor account of object categorization

We describe the results of a set of experiments in which we evolved the control system of artificial agents that are asked to categorize objects with different shapes on the basis of tactile information. Agents are provided with a 3-segments arm with 6 degrees of freedom and extremely coarse touch sensors. As we will see, despite such a limited sensory systems, evolved individuals are perfectly able to solve the problem. The analysis of the obtained results shows that evolved individuals always develop a well defined behavioral strategy that allows them to easily and robustly discriminate different objects despite the limitation of their sensory apparatus. Moreover, we discuss the general advantage of the evolutionary method for the synthesis of effective artificial agents.

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