Spring 2004

PSY 341K • Robot Cognition - W

Course Description

Cognitive Science is the study of the human mind. It is assumed that the mind is a very complex collection of algorithms that takes input from the eyes, ears and other modalities and translates this information into a representation that is useful for thought, reasoning and understanding. Understanding how the human does this is a very daunting task. However, it is assumed that once these algorithms are fully understood they can be implemented into a computer that will behave very much like the human. Because of the complexities of the human mind, we have not been able to implement that many cognitive algorithms into a machine. In this class we will take another approach to the problem. Instead of studying the human mind, wewill study the cognitive processes (algorithms) of existing robots. Students will run experiments on existing robots to infer the internal algorithm of the test robot. Given the data, they will make hypotheses about the underlying algorithm. Students will then implement their hypothesized algorithm on their own robots. This will serve as a test of whether their algorithm actually matches the robots algorithm. Finally, the student’s algorithm will be compared to the actual algorithm used by the test robots. Students in this class will be exposed to robotics, cognitive science and simple programming.

Grading Policy

TBA

Texts

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