The psychology of robots

In recent years, neural networks have been proposed that portray many of the complexities of adaptive behavior. The networks describe how agents learn to predict future events by: 1) building models of the would, 2) inferring new predictions from past experiences, 3) combining elementary environmental stimuli into complex internal representations, 4) attending to stimuli associated with environmental novelty, and 5) attending to stimuli that are good predictors of other environmental events. When a predictive network is attached to a goal seeking system, the resulting architecture is able to describe spatial and maze navigation, as well as problem solving and planning. When the predictions of future events are based on the combination of environmental stimuli and the animal's own responses the networks provide the information necessary to choose between alternative behaviors. When the agent's own responses can be identified with the responses of other agents, the networks can describe learning by imitation. It is suggested that these principles might be applied to the design of adaptive, communicating autonomous robots.