Cognitive Science

Jeremy Marchuck

PSYCH 1102

HW #3

1. a. Before Shakey begins movement, it takes in the environment through a camera lens. It also takes in information by touching objects it bumps into with its whiskers. It reports the information it takes into the camera lens to the researcher using teletype. It then gets information on how to move from the teletype, such as moving 2 feet. It can also do more complicated work by seeing if there are any objects in its path before moving and if there are set up sub goals around the object to get to its goal point before moving. If, while pushing a box and in motion, the box is moved off of it, the whiskers can tell where the box is and Shakey can maneuver to move it again.

b.  ASIMO needs to be able to judge distance to the goal point as well as judge if there are any obstacles in its way when walking. It needs to decide on what path to take to reach its goal. When dealing with stairs, it must decide on how high the steps are. For outputs, it must decide on how high to move its legs when dealing with steps as well as how to move its legs and how long to walk to reach goal points.

1. The morphological computation of passive dynamic walkers can show how animals have evolved to walk better and more efficiently. When passive dynamic walkers walk, they look alive because they move fluidly, like animals do when they walk. Through evolution animals have come to walk easier and they have been morphologically shaped to move and do other actions. This allows us to believe that not all computation and cognition is done in the brain but can be done by the body itself. This does not change my answer for 1b because ASIMO moves awkwardly and thinks about each action before it does it.

1. ANTS has several subsystems. For instance, it has 4 sensors around its body that alert it to when it bumps into objects so it can change direction. It also has 2 antennae on top of it that detect light and the side that detects more light is the side ANTS turns to. In a maze, the ANTS leave light paths when they travel through a maze, and other ANTS follow where the previous ones went because of the light path, quickly allowing them to move through the maze on the fastest path. The subsystems are ordered so that light sensitivity is less important than the obstacle sensors, so while it may start in the mode with light, the obstacle sensor will override if it runs into an obstacle.

1.             Shakey and ASIMO have several differences with the passive dynamic walkers and ANTS. Although all four are models that are created in order to move, Shakey and ASIMO tackle this task in a vastly different method when looking at the computational aspects for each robot and how it goes about completing its respective tasks of moving.

Shakey takes in information before moving, calculating its route before it moves. It gets its task through a computer from experimenters and executes those instructions. Meanwhile, ASIMO is given a goal point to reach and it constantly computes how to make it to that point.