NSF Young Investigator

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The purpose of this project is to bridge the gap between the interactive capacities of current robotic agents and human-like cognitive abilities that have long been the aim of artificial intelligence research. The basic thesis is the concept that embodiment itself both enables and constraints our cognitive capacities. Through interaction with imagined stimuli we reuse concrete machinery for abstract tasks. By agreeing as a society to interpret arbitrary signals in terms of our experiences, we develop symbolic language. We understand music, metaphor, and even mathematics by virtue of their relationships to our physical experiences. This project utilizes this thesis as a foundation and further explores the ways in which sophisticated, symbolic, and abstract forms of cognition are built on our embodied experiences.