Exploring Mechanisms of Cognitive and Behavioural Development in Humans and Machines

在人类的发展过程中，通过使用简单的能力作为学习更复杂的能力的基础，学习了新的行为。这种能力的逐步增加，由发展提供，可能是必不可少的，使易于处理的过程中获得更高层次的认知和行为能力在成年人中观察到。同样，发展可以使创造更智能的机器，特别是机器人变得容易。目前设计机器人控制器的方法依赖于预先指定的规则，管理机器人的行为。然而，这种预定义依赖于大量的设计工作或延长的搜索和测试时间。这使得复杂机器人或执行复杂任务或在复杂环境中操作的机器人难以预先指定。此外，由此产生的控制系统往往只适用于它被开发来解决的特定问题，并且在任何不可预见的情况下是脆弱的。这些问题可以通过为机器人提供适应其遵循的规则并自主创建用于控制行为的新规则的能力来解决。因此，发展的方法可以为机器人提供一个策略，发现如何表现，并可能是一个实际的必要性，生产机器人能够成功地在真实的世界中运行。因此，该项目旨在探索生物学中发育过程的神经机制，以提取可用于在机器人中实现类似发育过程的适当计算机制。实现这一目标不仅将为创造更具适应性和自主性的机器人提供适当的机制，还将为人类发展提供宝贵的见解。

During the developmental process in humans, qualitatively new behaviours are learnt by using simple abilities as a basis for learning more complex ones. This progressive increase in competence, provided by development, may be essential to make tractable the process of acquiring the higher-level cognitive and behavioural abilities observed in adults. Similarly, development could make tractable the creation of more intelligent machines, and specifically robots. Current methodologies for designing robot controllers depend on the prespecification of the rules governing the robot's behaviour. However, such predefinition relies on a significant design effort or on prolonged search and testing time. This makes prespecification intractable for a complex robot or one performing a complex task or operating in a complex environment. Furthermore, the resulting control system tends to be applicable only to the particular problem it was developed to solve and is brittle in the event of any unforeseen circumstances. These problems could be resolved by providing the robot with the ability to adapt the rules it follows and to autonomously create new rules for controlling behaviour. Developmental approaches could thus provide robots with a strategy for discovering how to behave and may be a practical necessity for producing robots capable of operating successfully in the real world. This project thus aims to explore the neural mechanisms underlying the developmental process in biology in order to extract appropriate computational mechanisms that could be used to implement a similar developmental process in a robot. Achieving this objective will not only provide mechanisms appropriate for creating more adaptive and autonomous robots but will also provide valuable insights into human development.