Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 7
Cognitive Systems and Artificial Brains
Cogniti ve Syste ms a nd Artificial Brai ns
Cognitive systems founded in the fields of artificial brain design and operation
show the direction in which computer science is developing hand in hand with
cognitive science.
Various applications of artificial and automatic solutions more and more often
delight the world, but we are also increasingly wondering about the extent to
which science can catch up with the reality and nature, which in an individual,
unique and not fully comprehensible way creates us and the world around us. To
what extent can we build an artificial brain and an artificial robot? How far can we
make that robot imitate human action? And the last, possibly the most crucial
question, to what extent is a robot able to imitate human skills and feelings?
If science today is capable of designing a robot which imitates human actions to
some extent, will the latter also be able to smell the scents, be delighted with
beauty, reflect on thoughts, or do these characteristics belong to the human kind
only? Attempts are now made to apply system solutions to analyse smells and re-
lated human sensations. This work is extremely complicated, as analyses of this
type are based on individual human sensations. For one person, the smells of per-
fume, tea, coffee, flowers, animals and the surroundings may be quite agreeable,
while for another, they may be unpleasant. In addition, every group of smells, e.g.
of flowers (plants), can evoke completely different feelings. Some may be de-
lighted by the smell of evening stock, for others it is too strong and intense. So
creating an ideal model which can be the foundation for designing a system ana-
lysing smell sensations may be a huge scientific challenge.
The same applies to designing a robot capable of understanding feelings and sen-
sations. There is no ideal model for defining satisfaction, joy, anger, annoyance,
friendship or even love. Every one of us defines feelings differently (sometimes
even subjectively), and everyone feels such emotions differently (individually).
Building a robot that could execute tasks not as complex as analysing smells,
for instance, but simple ones identical to those of humans, is now focusing around
the design of cognitive machines and cognitive robots. The main idea behind such
designs is the application of machine solutions, primarily cognitive ones. These
solutions consist in developing cognitive systems capable of imitating the greatest
possible number of human behaviours. The imitation process is based on the
course of human cognition, analysis, interpretation, reasoning and thinking proc-
esses. These processes, in turn, form the foundations for designing cognitive solu-
tions for the automatic interpretation of data and machine actions.
One program within the field of cognitive robot design was conducted in 2004-
2008 by a consortium of European research institutions dealing with robotics, cogni-
tive robots, artificial intelligence and computer visualisation. The program is known
as
COGNIRON Project LAAS-CNRS.
It has led to the design of a robot that [169]:
