From State Transitions to Sensory Regularity: Structuring Uninterpreted Sensory Signals From Naive Sensorimotor Experiences

How could a naive agent build some internal, subjective, notions of continuity in its sensorimotor experiences? This is a key question for all sensorimotor approaches to perception when trying to make them face realistic interactions with an environment, including noise in the perceived sensations, errors in the generation of motor trajectories, or uncertainties in the agent’s internal representation of this interaction. This article proposes a detailed formalization, but also some experimental assessments, of the structure, a naive agent can leverage from its own uninterpreted sensorimotor flow to capture a subjective sensory continuity, making it able to discover some notions of closeness or regularities in its experience. The precise role of the agent’s actions is also questioned with respect to the spatial and temporal dynamics of its exploration of the environment. On this basis, the previous authors’ contribution on sensory prediction is extended to successfully handle noisy data in the agent’s sensorimotor flow.