Cascaded Acts: Conscious Sequential Acting for Embodied Agents

A cognitive agent is expected to use awareness of the environment and its own body to direct its actions. Such awareness is required for the simplest and most common type of composite acts: sequences. To perform a sequence of acts, a cognitive agent should start performing one step when, and only when, it comes to believe that the previous one has been completed. We present a model for interleaving action, reasoning, and perception in order to allow for the conscious performance of sequences of acts. To define such a model, the notion of act completion needs to be characterized. This is achieved by developing a formal system in which acts are classified along the dimensions of telicity and primitiveness. The proposed system includes and goes beyond the traditional binary telic/atelic distinction.

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