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Is an Embodied System Ever Purely Reactive?

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Advances in Artificial Life (ECAL 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3630))

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Abstract

This paper explores the performance of a simple model agent using a reactive controller in situations where, from an external perspective, a solution that relies on internal states would seem to be required. In a visually-guided orientation task with sensory inversion and an object discrimination task a study of the instantaneous response properties and time-extended dynamics explain the non-reactive performance. The results question common intuitions about the capabilities of reactive controllers and highlight the significance of the agent’s recent history of interactions with its environment in generating behaviour. This work reinforces the idea that embodied behaviour exhibits properties that cannot be deduced directly from those of the controller by itself.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, Deparment of Informatics, University of Sussex,  

    Eduardo Izquierdo-Torres & Ezequiel Di Paolo

Authors
  1. Eduardo Izquierdo-Torres
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  2. Ezequiel Di Paolo
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Natural Computation Group, University of Kent, CT2 7NF, Canterbury, UK

    Mathieu S. Capcarrère

  2. Computing Laboratory and Centre for BioMedical Informatics, University of Kent, CT2 7NF, Canterbury, UK

    Alex A. Freitas

  3. Computer Science Department, University College London, London, UK

    Peter J. Bentley

  4. Computing Laboratory, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Colin G. Johnson

  5. Department of Electronics, University of York, YO10 5DD, Heslington, York, UK

    Jon Timmis

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Izquierdo-Torres, E., Di Paolo, E. (2005). Is an Embodied System Ever Purely Reactive?. In: Capcarrère, M.S., Freitas, A.A., Bentley, P.J., Johnson, C.G., Timmis, J. (eds) Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3630. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11553090_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11553090_26

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-28848-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31816-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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