Understanding Cognition by Building Robots

Abstract

Robotics can be seen as two very different lines of researchwith surprisingly little interaction. The first is concerned with the design of industrial robots, an area that has been very successful in increasing the level of industrial automation. The other field investigates intelligent machines that mayor may not be inspired by human or animal behaviour. The primary goal of this second line of research is not to build machines that can be put to work in a factory, but rather to increase our understanding of the principles and processes needed for intelligent behaviour. It is in this area we find robotics research that is directly relevant for cognitive science. In many cases robots are designed explicitly to test different theories about cognitive processes.