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Autonomous Representation Learning in a Developing Agent

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Computational and Robotic Models of the Hierarchical Organization of Behavior

Abstract

Our research goal is to design an agent that can begin with low-level sensors and effectors and autonomously learn high-level representations and actions through interaction with the environment. This chapter focuses on the problem of learning representations. We present four principles for autonomous learning of representations in a developing agent, and we demonstrate how these principles can be embodied in an algorithm. In a simulated environment with realistic physics, we show that an agent can use these principles to autonomously learn useful representations and effective hierarchical actions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Of course, for any fixed number of phenomena and any fixed number of statements about the phenomena, this is equivalent to a state-based representation. The differences are that the number of phenomena will change over time, and phenomena are considered largely independent of other phenomena.

  2. 2.

    A video describing QLAP can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ0g-NoerZ0.

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Acknowledgements

This work has taken place in the Intelligent Robotics Lab at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin. Research of the Intelligent Robotics lab is supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (IIS-0713150).

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Correspondence to Jonathan Mugan .

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Mugan, J., Kuipers, B. (2013). Autonomous Representation Learning in a Developing Agent. In: Baldassarre, G., Mirolli, M. (eds) Computational and Robotic Models of the Hierarchical Organization of Behavior. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39875-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39875-9_4

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