Abstract

From Reactive Behaviour to Adaptive Behaviour Motivational models for behaviour in animals and robots E. H. Spier, Balliol College, Trinity Term 1997 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy This thesis presents one possible way to design a control architecture that can be used to govern artificial animals. Such artefacts perform multiple-tasks and are expected to exist in a somewhat hostile environment -- they have to be adaptive. It also defends the position that automata, and animals, need not use reasoning to perform intelligent behaviour. Drawing from an ethological conception of motivation, a mathematical framework was described, computer simulations performed and preliminary work on a real robot discussed. It was shown that a reactive motivational algorithm performs better than alternatives that use simplistic models of the world, in a multiple resource foraging task. The reactive motivational framework was then extended to encompass instrumental behaviour as ...

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