Where Do I Move My Sensors? Emergence of a Topological Representation of Sensors Poses From the Sensorimotor Flow

This article deals with the perception of mobile robotic systems within the framework of interactive perception, and inspired by the sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs) theory. These approaches state that perception arises from the active exploration of an environment. In the SMC theory, it is postulated that information about the structure of space could be recovered from a quasi-uninterpreted sensorimotor flow. In a recent article, the authors have provided a mathematical framework for the construction of a sensorimotor representation of the interaction between the sensors and the body of a naive agent, provided that the sensory inputs come from the agent's own body. An extension of these results, with stimulations coming from an unknown changing environment, is proposed in this article. More precisely, it is demonstrated that, through repeated explorations of its motor configurations, the perceived sensory invariants can be exploited to build a topologically accurate internal representation of the relative poses of the agent's sensors in the physical world. Precise theoretical considerations are provided as well as an experimental framework assessed in simulated but challenging environments.