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European Conference on Artificial Life

ECAL 1995: Advances in Artificial Life pp 383–395Cite as

Can development be designed? What we may learn from the Cog Project

  • 3. Adaptive and Cognitive Systems
  • Conference paper
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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 929))

Abstract

Neither design nor evolutionary approaches to building behaviorbased robots feature a role for development in the genesis of behavioral organization. However, the new Cog Project aims to build a humanoid robot that will display behavioral abilities observed in human infants; and proposes making use of ideas from evolution and developmental psychology in its design. This paper provisionally evaluates this work from a developmental perspective, to show how developmental study may offer not only a source of phenomena for modelling but also a method that contributes to our understanding of self-organization. Cog's design methodology confronts problems with selection and interpretation of component behaviors, and how these may be better understood through appropriate developmental study is illustrated. Cog's design principles are shown to exhibit interesting convergences with infant mechanisms, based on the significance of emergent functionality and the action- as opposed to representation-based nature of initial and outcome mechanisms, but analysis of infants suggests a more constructive view of ability is required.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences, University of Sussex, BN1 9QH, Brighton, UK

    Julie C. Rutkowska

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  1. Julie C. Rutkowska
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Editor information

Federico Morán Alvaro Moreno Juan Julián Merelo Pablo Chacón

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© 1995 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Rutkowska, J.C. (1995). Can development be designed? What we may learn from the Cog Project. In: Morán, F., Moreno, A., Merelo, J.J., Chacón, P. (eds) Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 929. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-59496-5_313

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-59496-5_313

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-59496-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49286-3

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