Traversability: A Case Study for Learning and Perceiving Affordances in Robots

2010-06-01
Ugur, Emre
Şahin, Erol
The concept of affordances, introduced in psychology by J. J. Gibson, has recently attracted interest in the development of cognitive systems in autonomous robotics. In earlier work (Sahin, Cakmak, Dogar, Ugur, & Ucoluk), we reviewed the uses of this concept in different fields and proposed a formalism to use affordances at different levels of robot control. In this article, we first review studies in ecological psychology on the learning and perception of traversability in organisms and describe how the existence of traversability was judged to exist. We then describe the implementation of one part of the affordance formalism for the learning and perception of traversability affordances on a mobile robot equipped with range sensing ability. Through experiments inspired by ecological psychology, we show that the robot, by interacting with its environment, can learn to perceive the traversability affordances. Moreover, we claim that three of the main attributes that are commonly associated with affordances, that is, affordances being relative to the environment, providing perceptual economy, and providing general information, are simply consequences of learning from the interactions of the robot with the environment.
ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR

Suggestions

Implicit knowledge versus psychoacoustic similarity in priming of chords
Tekman, HG; Bharucha, JJ (American Psychological Association (APA), 1998-02-01)
A chord-priming paradigm was used to test predictions of a neural net model (MUSACT). The model makes a nonintuitive prediction: Following a prime chord, expectations for the target chord are based on psychoacoustic similarity al short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) but on implicit knowledge of conventional relationships at longer SOAs. In a critical rest, 2 targets were selected for each prime. One was more psychoacoustically similar to the prime, and the other was more closely related on the basis of ...
Investigation of cue-based aggregation in static and dynamic environments with a mobile robot swarm
Arvin, Farshad; Turgut, Ali Emre; Krajnik, Tomas; Yue, Shigang (SAGE Publications, 2016-04-01)
Aggregation is one of the most fundamental behaviors and has been studied in swarm robotic researches for more than two decades. Studies in biology have revealed that the environment is a preeminent factor, especially in cue-based aggregation. This can be defined as aggregation at a particular location which is a heat or a light source acting as a cue indicating an optimal zone. In swarm robotics, studies on cue-based aggregation mainly focused on different methods of aggregation and different parameters su...
To afford or not to afford: A new formalization of affordances toward affordance-based robot control
Şahin, Erol; Dogar, Mehmet R.; UĞUR, Emre; Üçoluk, Göktürk (SAGE Publications, 2007-01-01)
The concept of affordances was introduced by J. J. Gibson to explain how inherent "values" and "meanings" of things in the environment can be directly perceived and how this information can be linked to the action possibilities offered to the organism by the environment. Although introduced in psychology, the concept influenced studies in other fields ranging from human-computer interaction to autonomous robotics. In this article, we first introduce the concept of affordances as conceived by J. J. Gibson an...
The Distinctive Associations of Interpersonal Problems with Personality Beliefs Within the Framework of Cognitive Theory of Personality Disorders
Akyunus, Miray; Gençöz, Tülin (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2020-03-01)
The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between interpersonal problems and dysfunctional beliefs associated with personality disorders, within the framework of cognitive theory of personality disorders. Based on the proposition of cognitive theory, different dimensions of interpersonal problems which were assessed through the coordinates of interpersonal circumplex model were expected to be associated with specific categories of personality beliefs namely, deprecating, inflated, and ambivalent...
Performance in the Workplace: a Critical Evaluation of Cognitive Enhancement
Acartürk, Cengiz; Mücen, Barış (2022-04-01)
The popular debates about the future organization of work through artificial intelligence technologies focus on the replacement of human beings by novel technologies. In this essay, we oppose this statement by closely following what has been developed as AI technologies and analyzing how they work, specifically focusing on research that may impact work organizations. We develop this argument by showing that the recent research and developments in AI technologies focus on developing accurate and precise perf...
Citation Formats
E. Ugur and E. Şahin, “Traversability: A Case Study for Learning and Perceiving Affordances in Robots,” ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR, pp. 258–284, 2010, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/47982.