UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
	     COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

			    presents



    "Goal-oriented Self-organized Behaviour in Autonomous Robots"

			Dr. Simon Smith
   (Adaptive Systems Research Group, School of Computer Science,
		   University of Hertfordshire)

		      8 March 2017 (Wednesday)
			   1 - 2 pm


		  Hatfield, College Lane Campus
			Seminar Room D102

		  Everyone is Welcome to Attend

		  Refreshments will be available


Abstract:

In this presentation, I explore the properties and benefits of
self-organization of robot behaviour based on the homeokinetic learning
paradigm. A homeokinetic robot explores the environment in a coherent
way without prior knowledge of its configuration or the environment
itself. I study how self-organization of behaviour can be exploited to
learn internal representations for goal-oriented tasks.  Results show
that learning of internal models in this context yields faster reward
maximization and a higher final reward in reinforcement learning (RL).
Also, I will show how an initial exploration of the environment in
a goal-less yet coherent way improves learning. I examine an on-line
dual control architecture where an Actor-Critic RL and the homeokinetic
controller are combined. With this configuration, the probing signal
is generated by the exertion of the embodied robot experience with the
environment. This set-up solves the problem of designing task-dependent
probing signals by the emergence of intrinsically motivated comprehensible
behaviour.

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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://cs-colloq.cs.herts.ac.uk