M02 - Embodiment in Autonomous Agents Flashcards
What is embodiment?
- Indicate agents that posses a physical body
- The body plays a role as important as the role of the brain
What is morphology?
- the body composed of parts made of different materials and arranged in a given morphology
- constraints the behavior of the robot
What are the ways to approach intelligence?
- The classical approach
- The modern approach
Explain the classical approach to intelligence.
The focus is on the brain and central processing
Explain the modern approach.
The focus is on the interaction with the environment. Cognition is emergent from the system-environment interaction.
What are the main reasons why a robot should be embodied?
- preferable to purely computational or mathematical model
- to understand/model how human affordances grounded with interaction among object, tool and action
- use a humanoid robot with hands to model the sensorimotor capability of humans
- if you modeling a behavior that resembles human behavior, it is better that the robot resembles the body parts of the human
Do morphological properties constraint a robots behavior?
Yes. (e.g. morphology for flying not suited for swimming)
How many bodies do we have?
- the social body
- the sensorimotor body
- the living body
- the lived body
What is the social body?
As it appears to others
What is the sensorimotor body?
Which interacts with the environment
What is the living body?
Which has to self-regulate and self-maintain
What is the lived body?
As it is experienced by an agent itself
What is morphological computation?
The ability of the robot’s body to perform the function of the brain
What are advantages of the morphological computation?
- robots can use morphological computation to perform regulations that be difficult to perform through the brain (e.g. very fast regulations)
- robots can produce “complex” behavior with “simple” brains
What is body adaption?
The body of the robot can be adapted to enable the robot to perform a desired function.
Give an example of body adaptation.
The evolutionary process produces robots with more adapted bodies capable to walk better
What are the body parts of cubic cells?
- a bone cell made of rigid material
- a tissue cell made of soft material
- a muscle cell that periodically contracts and expands
- Sensorless (except for local expansion/contraction)
- Brainless: the ability to walk comes exclusively from their morphological characteristics
What are Xenobots?
- passive and contractile cells evolved in simulation and then manufactured by using living (brainless) cells
- behavior similar to corresponding creatures in simulation
- capable to explore environment without human intervention
What is the set-up to an experiment where the body and brain can co-evolve?
- fixed number of morphological & control parameters
- direct encoding method in which each morphological & control parameter is encoded in a corresponding element of the genotype
- indirect encoding method and genotypes with varying length
What is the ideal approach to body and brain co-evolution?
- simple
(set of elementary elements, analogous to amino acids) - should have high expressive power
(generation of wide spectrum phenotypes) - should enable the generation of evolved solutions (generation of agent with genetic variations)
The higher level of embodiment, the higher the chance that the robot will operate effectively. True or False.
True.
The higher the embodiment, the higher the amount of computation performed by the body. True or False.
True.
What is the classification of sensors?
sensor -> exteroceptive (active or passive) or proprioceptive
What are the types of exteroceptive sensors?
- active
- passive
Explain active exteroceptive sensors.
- emit energy to the environment and measure the reaction of the environment
- it affects the environment
Give examples for active exteroceptive sensors.
-lidar, laser, sonars and most of distance sensors
Explain passive exteroceptive sensors.
- passively receive and measure energy from the environment
- does not affect the environment
Give an example of a passive sensor.
camera
How does a depth sensory work?
- depth sensor provides image resolution
- the image data are the distance between the object and the depth sensor in millimeters
How does a distance sensor work?
Transmits a wave and receives its reflection
What are the implications of morphological computation?
- the functions played by the body and by the brain are not separated
- the role played by the brain cannot be explained without considering the role of the body and vice versa
What will perform better: hand-designed morphology vs. brain/body co-evolving morphology?
Brain/body co-evolving morphology
What is the definition of embodiment by S.Nolfi?
Embodiment indicates the extension to which the body of a robot is adapted to the other constituting elements: the brain of the robot, the environment and the task the robot should accomplish
What does a RGB camera do?
Recognizes/Classifies objects
For what do you use Ultrasound and Infrared sensors?
For avoiding obstacles during navigation by getting distance between robot and obstacles
For what do you use tactile sensors?
For getting mechanical property of an object
