SERKET: An Architecture for Connecting Stochastic Models to Realize a Large-Scale Cognitive Model

• Main Authors: Tomoaki Nakamura, Takayuki Nagai, Tadahiro Taniguchi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-06-01
• Series: Frontiers in Neurorobotics
• Subjects: cognitive models; probabilistic generative models; symbol emergence in robotics; concept formation; unsupervised learning
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnbot.2018.00025/full

To realize human-like robot intelligence, a large-scale cognitive architecture is required for robots to understand their environment through a variety of sensors with which they are equipped. In this paper, we propose a novel framework named Serket that enables the construction of a large-scale generative model and its inferences easily by connecting sub-modules to allow the robots to acquire various capabilities through interaction with their environment and others. We consider that large-scale cognitive models can be constructed by connecting smaller fundamental models hierarchically while maintaining their programmatic independence. Moreover, the connected modules are dependent on each other and their parameters must be optimized as a whole. Conventionally, the equations for parameter estimation have to be derived and implemented depending on the models. However, it has become harder to derive and implement equations of large-scale models. Thus, in this paper, we propose a parameter estimation method that communicates the minimum parameters between various modules while maintaining their programmatic independence. Therefore, Serket makes it easy to construct large-scale models and estimate their parameters via the connection of modules. Experimental results demonstrated that the model can be constructed by connecting modules, the parameters can be optimized as a whole, and they are comparable with the original models that we have proposed.