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Evolution of Sensors
Tutorial at Alife IX
Daniel Polani
Department of Computer Science
University of Hertfordshire
United Kingdom
Motivation
An individual or agent usually is seen as an essentially distinguished
subentity of a larger system, its environment. The environment can
exert its influence on the agent in a manifold variety of different
ways. Sensors and actors constitute the interface between environment
and agent, enabling the latter to identify its current state and,
using this knowledge, to gain certain control over its own fate. Since
information is central for the ability to perform effective actions,
an efficient utilization of available state information is vital to
survive in an environment governed by selection.
The principle of accessing new sensory channels and to make use of the
implicit information coded there has been exploited in nature to a
formidable degree. Olfactory, tactile, auditive and visual, but also
e.g. electric and even magnetic senses have been realized in a vast
multitude of variants, often utilizing organs not originally
"intended" for the purpose they serve. At the same time, as already
Darwin points out, it seems difficult to believe that an organ of such
complexity as e.g. the eye "could have been formed by natural
selection". Nevertheless photoreceptors of widely different degree of
differentiation have evolved in at least forty independent lines of
descent.
Several motivations drive the study of sensor evolution. One is to
understand the mechanisms that drive the creation of sensors
exploiting information sources in such a large variety of ways; this
aspect has intimate connections with questions of evolvability. The
second is to develop agents that can adapt themselves with a higher
degree of flexibility to their environment. Thirdly, there are strong
indications that understanding the acquisition of sensory information
can provide deep and far-reaching insights into role and mechanisms of
intelligent information processing and of embodiment.
Aims of the Tutorial
In this tutorial the audience will be introduced to the general topic
of sensor evolution. The interface role that sensors in the
interaction between agents and environment will be discussed and
different views of the sensor concept will be developed. An overview
over sensors evolved in nature and the role of different types of
mechanisms of evolvability; we will devote special attention to
several particularly intriguing examples of sensor development to
illustrate the spectrum of phenomena. Focusing on sensory information
processing we will stress and discuss the tight connection between
sensor evolution and that of information processing (e.g. neural)
systems. This tutorial strives to give the audience insights into the
scope, the philosophy, the models, and the methods of sensor evolution
research as well as the implications the study of sensor evolution has
for other fields in Artificial Life, Biology and Robotics.
Target Audience
The targeted audience includes a broad range of people, in particular,
people interested in: general evolutionary mechanisms for sensor
development, also with respect to perspectives for hardware evolution;
general questions of (embodiment) evolution and evolvability;
fundamental questions of information processing in embodied
action-perception loops and its role for modelling life-like systems.
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