Artificial Cognitive Systems: A Primer

by David Vernon

A concise introduction to a complex field, bringing together recent work in cognitive science and cognitive robotics to offer a solid grounding on key issues. This book offers a concise and accessible introduction to the emerging field of artificial cognitive systems. Cognition, both natural and artificial, is about anticipating the need for action and developing the capacity to predict the outcome of those actions. Drawing on artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, the field of artificial cognitive systems has as its ultimate goal the creation of computer-based systems that can interact with humans and serve society in a variety of ways. This primer brings together recent work in cognitive science and cognitive robotics to offer readers a solid grounding on key issues. The book first develops a working definition of cognitive systems—broad enough to encompass multiple views of the subject and deep enough to help in the formulation of theories and models. It surveys the cognitivist, emergent, and hybrid paradigms of cognitive science and discusses cognitive architectures derived from them. It then turns to the key issues, with chapters devoted to autonomy, embodiment, learning and development, memory and prospection, knowledge and representation, and social cognition. Ideas are introduced in an intuitive, natural order, with an emphasis on the relationships among ideas and building to an overview of the field. The main text is straightforward and succinct; sidenotes drill deeper on specific topics and provide contextual links to further reading.

Genres: Artificial Intelligence

265 pages, Hardcover

First published October 17, 2014

About the author

David Vernon is a full time writer and editor. While he is known for his non-fiction books about birth: Men at Birth, Having a Great Birth in Australia, Birth Stories and With Women, he has turned his hand to writing science articles for newspapers and magazines as well as scribbling the odd short story or two. He established the Stringybark Short Stories Awards in 2010 to promote short story writing. He recently completed "A Good Yarn" an Australian history book. He was the Chair of the ACT Writers Centre for six years.

Reviews

[Arnoud Visser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is philosophical primer about the interaction between what we know about human cognition and how we design robotic brains. David Vernon knows where he is talking about, he was one of the researchers that created the robotic child iCub. He did an extensive reading in a wide variety of relevant literature, which he discusses in side-notes.

It is intense reading, with highlighting the essential differences between nearly equivalent approaches. The book is quite abstract, without many concrete examples, but that will keep it longer up-to-date.