Cognitive map plasticity and imitation strategies to improve individual and social behaviors of autonomous agents

• Main Authors: Laroque Philippe, Gaussier Nathalie, Cuperlier Nicolas, Quoy Mathias, Gaussier Philippe
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: De Gruyter 2010-03-01
• Series: Paladyn: Journal of Behavioral Robotics
• Subjects: embodied intelligence; biomimetic autonomous systems; cognitive maps; imitation; social intelligence; collective learning
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.2478/s13230-010-0004-2

Starting from neurobiological hypotheses on the existence of place cells (PC) in the brain, the aim of this article is to show how little assumptions at both individual and social levels can lead to the emergence of non-trivial global behaviors in a multi-agent system (MAS). In particular, we show that adding a simple, hebbian learning mechanism on a cognitive map allows autonomous, situated agents to adapt themselves in a dynamically changing environment, and that even using simple agent-following strategies (driven either by similarities in the agent movement, or by individual marks - “signatures” - in agents) can dramatically improve the global performance of the MAS, in terms of survival rate of the agents. Moreover, we show that analogies can be made between such a MAS and the emergence of certain social behaviors.