Developmental Autonomous Behavior: An Ethological Perspective to Understanding Machines

Developmental autonomous behavior refers to the general ability of a machine to acquire new skills and behavior from its birth to maturity on its own without human intervention. This article describes the principles of behavior development in machines, providing a practical framework to analyze and synthesize machines with developmental capabilities. Inspired by biological views of behavioral causation, the work emphasizes principled explanations to, not only the “how” question on mechanisms but also the “why” question on causation of behavior development. This ethology-oriented perspective offers a renewed opportunity to construct a theoretical framework from the ground up, overcoming the age-old problems of intrinsic motivation and symbol emergence in autonomous machines. One of the key contributions of this article is the logical explanation of why and how value systems drive successive development of memory functions, resulting in progressive changes in behavior from innate reflexive to episodic, procedural, and autonomic behavior. Another notable contribution is the logical and plausible explanation of why and how a physical sensorimotor system becomes a symbol processor, fostering conceptual and social behavior development. This article provides an extensive review of prior research, followed by detailed descriptions of the causality and mechanisms of behavior development, and concludes with discussions on criticism, future work, ethics, and system architecture.