Toward a Practice of Autonomous Systems Proceedings of the First European Conference on Artificial Life

by Varela, Francisco J.; Bourgine, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780262720199
• ISBN10: 0262720191
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-04-02
• Publisher: Bradford Books

Summary

Artificial life embodies a recent and important conceptual step in modem science: asserting that the core of intelligence and cognitive abilities is the same as the capacity for living. The recent surge of interest in artificial life has pushed a whole range of engineering traditions, such as control theory and robotics, beyond classical notions of goal and planning into biologically inspired notions of viability and adaptation, situatedness and operational closure. These proceedings serve two important functions: they address bottom-up theories of artificial intelligence and explore what can be learned from simple models such as insects about the cognitive processes and characteristic autonomy of living organisms, while also engaging researchers and philosophers in an exciting examination of the epistemological basis of this new trend. Francisco J. Varela is Director of Research at CNRS in Paris, France. Paul Bourgine is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at CEMAGREF, Antony, France. Topics include: Artificial Animals. Genetic Algorithms. Autonomous Systems. Emergent Behaviors. Artificial Ecologies. Immunologic Algorithms. Self-Adapting Systems. Emergent Structures. Emotion And Motivation. Neural Networks. Coevolution. Fitness Landscapes Contributors include: H. Bersini. Domenico Parisi. Rodney A. Brooks. Christopher G. Langton. S. Kauffman. J.-L. Denenbourg. Pattie Maes. John Holland. T. Smithers. H. Swefel. H. Muhlenbein.

Author Biography

Francisco J. Varela (1946–2001) was Director of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Professor of Cognitive Science and Epistemology, CREA, at the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, and Cofounder of the Mind and Life Institute.

Paul Bourgine is the honorary director of RNSC, the French National Network of Complex Systems, former director of the CREA laboratory at Ecole Polytechnique, and founder of the Complex Systems Institute, Paris. He is also a co-founder of the CECOIA conferences in economics and artificial intelligence (1986), the ECAL conferences in artificial life (1990), the ECCE conferences in cognitive economics (2004) and the ECCS conferences in complex systems science (2005).

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Towards a Practice of Autonomous Systems
Artificial Life and Real Robots	p. 3
Concept Formation as Emergent Phenomena	p. 11
Distributed Adaptive Control: A Paradigm for Designing Autonomous Agents	p. 21
Taking Eliminative Materialism Seriously: A Methodology for Autonomous Systems Research	p. 31
An Adaptable Mobile Robot	p. 41
Learning Behavior Networks from Experience	p. 48
Characterizing Adaptation by Constraint	p. 58
On the Self-Organizing Properties of Topological Maps	p. 64
Massively Parallel Evolution of Recurrent Networks: An Approach to Temporal Processing	p. 70
Neural Networks for Visual Tracking in an Artificial Fly	p. 78
An Approach to Sensorimotor Relevance	p. 88
Using Motor Actions for Location Recognition	p. 96
The Application of Temporal Difference Learning to the Neural Control of Quadruped Locomotion	p. 105
Evolution of Subsumption Using Genetic Programming	p. 110
Swarm-Made Architectures	p. 123
Distributed Optimization by Ant Colonies	p. 134
Emergent Colonization in an Artificial Ecology	p. 143
The Maximum Entropy Principle and Sensing in Swarm Intelligence	p. 153
A Behavioral Simulation Model for the Study of Emergent Social Structures	p. 161
Interactive Evolution of Dynamical Systems	p. 171
Simulating Co-Evolution with Mimetism	p. 179
Dynamics of Artificial Markets: Speculative Markets and Emerging "Common Sense" Knowledge	p. 185
Harvesting by a Group of Robots	p. 195
Learning, Behavior, and Evolution	p. 207
Immune Network and Adaptive Control	p. 217
Genetic Self-Learning	p. 227
Darwin's Continent Cycle Theory and Its Simulation by the Prisoner's Dilemma	p. 236
The Royal Road for Genetic Algorithms: Fitness Landscapes and GA Performance	p. 245
Using Marker-Based Genetic Encoding of Neural Networks to Evolve Finite-State Behaviour	p. 255
Self-Adaptation in Genetic Algorithms	p. 263
Steerable GenNets: The Genetic Programming of Steerable Behaviors in GenNets	p. 272
An Action Based Neural Network for Adaptive Control: The Tank Case Study	p. 282
A Model of Formal Neural Network for Non-Supervised Learning and Recognition of Temporal Sequences	p. 292
Characterizing the Adaptation Abilities of a Class of Genetic Based Machine Learning Algorithms	p. 302
Genetic Algorithms Applied to Formal Neural Networks: Parallel Genetic Implementation of a Boltzmann Machine and Associated Robotic Experimentations	p. 310
The Holland [alpha]-Universes Revisited	p. 317
The Evolution of Sexual Selection and Female Choice	p. 327
A Model for the Emergence of Sex in Evolving Networks: Adaptive Advantage or Random Drift?	p. 337
Species Adaptation Genetic Algorithms: A Basis for a Continuing SAGA	p. 346
The Computer Zoo - Evolution in a Box	p. 355
Measuring the Evolving Complexity of Stimulus-Response Organisms	p. 365
Natural Selection in a Population of Automata	p. 375
The Historical and Epistemological Ground of von Neumann's Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata and Theory of Games	p. 385
Meta-Knowledge, Autonomy, and (Artificial) Evolution: Some Lessons Learnt So Far	p. 392
Feedforward: The Ethological Basis of Animal Learning	p. 399
Computing at the Tissue/Organ Level (with Particular Reference to the Liver)	p. 411
The Connection between AI and Biology in the Study of Behaviour	p. 421
Amoeba, Planaria, and Dreaming Machines	p. 429
Selectionist Systems as Cognitive Systems	p. 441
Looking at Life	p. 448
Animat's I	p. 456
Life as an Abstract Phenomenon: Is Artificial Life Possible?	p. 466
Life = Cognition: The Epistemological and Ontological Significance of Artificial Life	p. 475
Some Epistemological Implications of Devices Which Construct Their Own Sensors and Effectors	p. 484
Philosophical Aspects of Artificial Life	p. 494
Artificial Life or Surreal Art?	p. 504
Author Index	p. 515
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