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From Motor Babbling to Purposive Actions: Emerging Self-exploration in a Dynamical Systems Approach to Early Robot Development

  • Conference paper
From Animals to Animats 9 (SAB 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 4095))

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Abstract

Self-organization and the phenomenon of emergence play an essential role in living systems and form a challenge to artificial life systems. This is not only because systems become more lifelike, but also since self-organization may help in reducing the design efforts in creating complex behavior systems. The present paper studies self-exploration based on a general approach to the self-organization of behavior, which has been developed and tested in various examples in recent years. This is a step towards autonomous early robot development. We consider agents under the close sensorimotor coupling paradigm with a certain cognitive ability realized by an internal forward model. Starting from tabula rasa initial conditions we overcome the bootstrapping problem and show emerging self-exploration. Apart from that, we analyze the effect of limited actions, which lead to deprivation of the world model. We show that our paradigm explicitly avoids this by producing purposive actions in a natural way. Examples are given using a simulated simple wheeled robot and a spherical robot driven by shifting internal masses.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Science, University of Leipzig, POB 920, D-04009, Leipzig, Germany

    Ralf Der

  2. Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, University of Goettingen, Bunsenstr. 10, D-37073, Goettingen, Germany

    Georg Martius

Authors
  1. Ralf Der
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  2. Georg Martius
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, LARRAL, Via S. Martino della Battaglia 44, 00185, Roma, Italy

    Stefano Nolfi

  2. Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology, (ISTC-CNR), Via San Martino della Battaglia 44, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Gianluca Baldassarre

  3. Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology, ISTC-CNR, Via S. Martino della Battaglia 44, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Raffaele Calabretta  & Davide Marocco  & 

  4. The Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230, Odense M, Denmark

    John C. T. Hallam

  5. UPMC Univ Paris 6, FRE2507, ISIR, F-75016, Paris, France

    Jean-Arcady Meyer

  6. Laboratory of Autonomous Robotics and Artificial Life, Institute of Cognitive, Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Rome, Italy

    Orazio Miglino

  7. Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, 44, Via San Martino della, 00185, Rome, Battaglia, Italy

    Domenico Parisi

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Der, R., Martius, G. (2006). From Motor Babbling to Purposive Actions: Emerging Self-exploration in a Dynamical Systems Approach to Early Robot Development. In: Nolfi, S., et al. From Animals to Animats 9. SAB 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4095. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11840541_34

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11840541_34

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-38608-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-38615-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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