Mapping the space of skills: An approach for comparing embodied sensorimotor organizations

Abstract

This article presents a mathematical framework based on information theory to compare temporally-extended embodied sensorimotor organizations. Central to this approach is the notion of configuration: a set of distances between information sources, statistically evaluated for a given time span. Because information distances capture simultaneously effects of physical closeness, intermodality, functional relationship and external couplings, a configuration characterizes an embodied interaction with a particular environment. In this approach, collections of skills can be mapped in a unified space as configurations of configurations. This article describes these different abstractions in a formal manner and presents results of preliminary experiments showing how this framework can be used to capture the behavioral organization of an autonomous robot