Evolving cognitive-behavioural dependencies in situated agents for behavioural robustness

FERNANDEZ-LEON, J.A.

BIOSYSTEMS

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2011 p. 94 - 110

0303-2647

This article investigates the emergence of robust behaviour in agents with dynamically limited controllers (monostable agents), and compares their performance to less limited ones (bistable agents). ´Dynamically limited´ here refers to a reduced quantity of steady states that an agent controller exhibits when it does not receive stimulus from the environment. Agents are evolved for categorical perception, a minimal cognitive task, and must correlate approaching or avoiding movements based on (two) different types of objects. Results indicate a significant tendency to better behavioural robustness by monostable in contrast to bistable agents in the presence of sensorimotor, mutational, and structural perturbations. Discussions here focus on a further dependence to coupled dynamics by the former agents to explain such a tendency.