REVERB Reverse Engineering the VERtebrate Brain
Formal Title:
Integrative computation for autonomous agents: a novel approach based on the vertebrate brain
Summary:
In many situations it is better to have autonomous agents or robots to "do things that humans don't want to do, in a places they don't want to be, at times they don't want". For example, it would be very useful to have robots that can perform important tasks in dangerous, hostile or inaccessible environments, monitor the environment and the performance of humans for signs of danger, provide assistance to the disabled, aged or infirm, or have artificial agents or virtual characters in computer games that can entertain. However, what is required in each of these situations is for the agent to respond flexibly and adaptively to unpredictable circumstances. To do this successfully it needs to perform many different behaviours, and have the capacity to switch between tasks as circumstances dictate. That is, the agent must combine or integrate all its possible actions and behaviours harmoniously so that it does the right thing at the right time in a rapidly changing world, and changing internal motivations (just like animals and humans). It also needs the ability to learn from its mistakes and successes because it is impossible to pre-programme such a device to deal with all the possibilities it might face. While these requirements are easy to describe, they have proved difficult to achieve in practice, as recently shown by the general failure of contestants in the recent race for autonomous vehicles organised by the American military (http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/).
[link via robots.net]
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