Learning Sensorimotor Agency in Cellular Automata
Résumé
In this blogpost ( https://developmentalsystems.org/sensorimotor-lenia/ ), we explore the concepts of embodiment, individuality, self-maintenance and sensorimotor agency within a cellular automaton (CA) environment. Whereas those concepts are central in theoretical biology and cognitive science, it remains unclear how such behaviors can emerge in a CA-like environment made only of low-level particles and physical rules. We present a novel set of tools (based on curriculum learning, diversity search and gradient descent over a differentiable CA) to automatically learn the rules leading to the emergence of such behaviors. Our method is able to discover robust self-organizing agents with strong coherence and generalization to out-of-distribution changes, reminiscent of the robustness of living systems to maintain specific functions despite environmental and body perturbations.
https://developmentalsystems.org/sensorimotor-lenia/