Robots as Powerful Allies for the Study of Embodied Cognition from the Bottom Up

A large body of evidence shows that embodiment—an agent's physical setup, including shape, materials, sensors, and actuators—is essential for cognition, so models of cognition must be embodied. Robots offer a powerful tool because their embodiment and control programs can be systematically varied, unlike in empirical sciences. This paper presents a robotic, bottom-up, developmental approach with three stages: low-level behaviors like walking and reflexes, learning regularities in sensorimotor spaces, and human-like cognition. Robotic research deepens understanding of cognition, and robots benefit from human-like cognition to become more autonomous, robust, resilient, and safe.

Study at a glance

Abstract

A large body of compelling evidence has been accumulated demonstrating that embodiment—the agent’s physical setup, including its shape, materials, sensors, and actuators—is constitutive for any form of cognition, and, as a consequence, models of cognition need to be embodied. In contrast to methods from empirical sciences to study cognition, robots can be freely manipulated and virtually all key variables of their embodiment and control programs can be systematically varied. As such, they provide an extremely powerful tool of investigation. We present a robotic, bottom-up, or developmental approach, focusing on three stages: (1) low-level behaviors like walking and reflexes, (2) learning regularities in sensorimotor spaces, and (3) human-like cognition. We also show that robotic-based research is not only a productive path to deepening our understanding of cognition, but that robots can strongly benefit from human-like cognition in order to become more autonomous, robust, resilient, and safe.