| Popis: |
At the heart of statistical learning lies the concept of uncertainty. Similarly, embodied agents such as robots and animals must likewise address uncertainty, as sensation is always only a partial reflection of reality. This thesis addresses the role that uncertainty can play in a central building block of intelligence: categorization. Cognitive agents are able to perform tasks like categorical perception through physical interaction (active categorical perception; ACP), or passively at a distance (distal categorical perception; DCP). It is possible that the former scaffolds the learning of the latter. However, it is unclear whether DCP indeed scaffolds ACP in humans and animals, nor how a robot could be trained to likewise learn DCP from ACP. Here we demonstrate a method for doing so which involves uncertainty: robots perform ACP when uncertain and DCP when certain. Furthermore, we demonstrate that robots trained in such a manner are more competent at categorizing novel objects than robots trained to categorize in other ways. This suggests that such a mechanism would also be useful for humans and animals, suggesting that they may be employing some version of this mechanism. |
