Different Forms of Random Motor Activity Scaffold the Formation of Different Habits in a Simulated Robot

Abstract

A habit is formed through the repeated enactment of sensorimotor regularities created and maintained by means of plastic changes on the mechanism that brings them about. This precarious, self-maintaining sensorimotor organization is known as sensorimotor autonomy. One can imagine how some habits would be better suited to the maintenance of a biological individual. Evolution can bias the parameters of the plastic medium over which sensorimotor autonomy emerge so as to be beneficial to biological autonomy. In this work, we show that varying some parameters that bring about plastic changes in the behavior-generating medium, different sensorimotor individuals emerge. The simulation consists of a simple robot coupled with a habit-based controller with a random-based exploratory phase in a one-dimensional environment. The results show that, varying the parameters of such a phase, qualitative different habits emerge characterized by static, monotonic and oscillatory behaviors. Quantitative variations of the oscillatory behavior are also shown using the frequencies distribution obtained from the motor time series of the formed habits. The results are interpreted in terms of how the sensorimotor habitat could emerge from the random traversing of the sensorimotor environment. Finally, a comparison between this model and the skin brain thesis is presented.