Grounding Perception: A Developmental Approach to Sensorimotor\n Contingencies

Abstract

Sensorimotor contingency theory offers a promising account of the nature of\nperception, a topic rarely addressed in the robotics community. We propose a\ndevelopmental framework to address the problem of the autonomous acquisition of\nsensorimotor contingencies by a naive robot. While exploring the world, the\nrobot internally encodes contingencies as predictive models that capture the\nstructure they imply in its sensorimotor experience. Three preliminary\napplications are presented to illustrate our approach to the acquisition of\nperceptive abilities: discovering the environment, discovering objects, and\ndiscovering a visual field.\n