Hybrid Models and Representations, latest developments

Our research group Representational Brains and Phenotypes has recently been doing a lot of work in the area of embodied nervous systems simulation. Our go-to model over the past year and a half [1] has been the Braitenberg Vehicle (BV), which makes explicit the relationships between interactions with the environment, a neuronal network, and behavior. In the recently open-sourced Meta-Brain Models initiative, we are looking beyond the highly-limited representational framework of the BV by creating hybrid models that combine Vehicles with a representation-rich model (one that specifies symbolic and semantic properties).  

Representational Brains and Phenotypes website. Click to enlarge.

A few weeks ago, members of our research group presented on this topic at the DevoNN (virtual) workshop. Our paper and presentation "Developmental Embodied Agents as Meta-brain Models" introduced the Meta-brain concept to a wider audience, which in this case coupled a developmental Braitenberg Vehicles (dBV) and Contextual Geometric Sturctures (CGS) [2,3]. dBV and CGS are coupled as layers that interact in ways that resemble central nervous systems [4]. Other model combinations are possible, but must conform to the representation-free/representation-rich layering.

 

DevoNN logo and the layered representations approach. Click to enlarge.

This has the potential to leverage not only embodied aspects of intelligent behavior, but its symbolic aspects of as well. There are also opportunities to expand our layered representations in the direction of growth, form, and analogues of biological plasticity [5]. DevoNN was part of Artificial Life 2020, which was in itself a great virtual conference experience. Everything from digital evolution to robotics, and from computational social science to adaptive systems. 

Artificial Life 2020 (proceedings here). Click to enlarge.

While our extended abstract is not in the Proceedings, I was also able to given a lightning talk on the OpenWorm approach to virtual organisms. 

OpenWorm lightning talk. Click to enlarge.

NOTES:

[1] Check out our Saturday Morning NeuroSim research meetings on YouTube. Contact the Orthogonal Research and Education Lab if you would like to join in!

[2] Dvoretskii, S., Gong, Z., Gupta, A., Parent, J., and Alicea, B. Braitenberg Vehicles as Developmental Neurosimulation. arXiv, 2003.07689. doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.31149.23526.

[3] Alicea, B. Contextual Geometric Structures: modeling the fundamental components of cultural behavior. Proceedings of Artificial Life, 13, 147-154.

[4] examples include the relationship between the Thalamus and Neocortex of Mammals. For functional and evolutionary context, see: Karten H.J. (2015). Vertebrate brains and evolutionary connectomics: on the origins of the mammalian "neocortex". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 370, 20150060

[5] this recent paper is the subject of a presentation at the Dynamics Days Digital conference, but is providing some inspiration for further development towards AI innateness: Alicea, B. (2020). Developmental Incongruity as a Dynamical Representation of Heterochrony. ResearchGate, doi:10. 13140/RG.2.2.17401.08807/1