Robotic perception of dwelling: threshhold of thinking machines

The contribution of this paper is the introduction of an abstract sensor-actuator pair to the subsumption architecture of robots introduced by Brooks (1987). The perceiving side of this pair derives from Gibson's (1979) affordance, which is a form of grasping of situations involving perceived objects. This study is part of a new form of evolutionary robotics called cognitive robotics. It considers a new context for a classical form of learning, namely, habitation. The inspiration for the form of affordances described in this paper comes from Heidegger's (1982) notion of the convergence of the concurrent activities of building, dwelling and thinking. In some sense, building and dwelling are at the threshhold of thinking. A brief description of the form and functioning of abstract S-A pairs is given.