Series:

A Bradford Book

2 total works

Cover of How the Body Shapes the Way We Think
An exploration of embodied intelligence and its implications points toward a theory of intelligence in general; with case studies of intelligent systems in ubiquitous computing, business and management, human memory, and robotics.

How could the body influence our thinking when it seems obvious that the brain controls the body? In How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard demonstrate that thought is not independent of the body but is tightly constrained, and at the same time enabled, by it. They argue that the kinds of thoughts we are capable of have their foundation in our embodiment—in our morphology and the material properties of our bodies.

This crucial notion of embodiment underlies fundamental changes in the field of artificial intelligence over the past two decades, and Pfeifer and Bongard use the basic methodology of artificial intelligence—"understanding by building"—to describe their insights. If we understand how to design and build intelligent systems, they reason, we will better understand intelligence in general. In accessible, nontechnical language, and using many examples, they introduce the basic concepts by building on recent developments in robotics, biology, neuroscience, and psychology to outline a possible theory of intelligence. They illustrate applications of such a theory in ubiquitous computing, business and management, and the psychology of human memory. Embodied intelligence, as described by Pfeifer and Bongard, has important implications for our understanding of both natural and artificial intelligence.

Cover of Understanding Intelligence
Evolutionary theory says that the brain has evolved not to do mathematical proofs but to control behaviour and ensure survival. Researchers agree that intelligence always manifests itself in behaviour - thus it is behaviour that must be understood. A new field has grown around the study of behaviour-based intelligence, also known as embodied cognitive science, "new AI" and "behaviour-based AI". This book provides a systematic introduction to this new way of thinking. After discussing concepts and approaches such as subsumption architecture, Braitenberg vehicles, evolutionary robotics, artificial life, self-organization and learning, the authors derive a set of principles and a framework for the study of naturally and artificially intelligent systems, or autonomous agents. This framework is based on a synthetic methodology whose goal is understanding by designing and building. The text includes the background material required to understand the principles underlying intelligence, as well as information of intelligent robotics and simulated agents so readers can begin experiments and projects on their own.
The reader is guided through a series of case studies that illustrate the design principles of embodied cognitive science.