CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository
ANIMALS: Computer simulations of animal behavior (Toby
Tyrrell)
areas/agents/animals/
ANIMALS is a simulation system written by Toby Tyrrell for his PhD
thesis. The thesis examines the problem of action selection when
dealing with realistic, animal-like situations: how to choose, at each
moment in time, the most appropriate out of a repertoire of possible
actions. It includes a description is given of a simulated
environment which is an extensive and detailed simulation of the
problem of action selection for animals. This simulated environment
is used to investigate the adequacy of several theories of action
selection (from both ethology and artificial intelligence) such as the
drive model, Lorenz's psycho-hydraulic model and Maes' spreading
activation network, and outlines deficiencies in each mechanism.
Finally, it proposes a new approach to action selection is developed
which determines the most appropriate action in a principled way, and
which does not suffer from the inherent shortcomings found in other
methods. The thesis includes a review and bibliography of existing
work on action selection.
The action selection problem modeled by the simulated environment
comprises 15 different `sub-problems' (getting food, reproducing,
not getting lost, being vigilant for predators, etc.), many internal
and external stimuli, and 35 different low-level actions to select
between.
Origin:
ftp.ed.ac.uk:/pub/lrtt/ [129.215.146.5]
Thesis: as*.ps.Z
Software: se.tar.Z
Requires: Suntools (SunView or OpenWindows)
CD-ROM: Prime Time Freeware for AI, Issue 1-1
Author(s): Toby Tyrrell or
Centre for Cognitive Science
University of Edinburgh
2 Buccleuch Place
Edinburgh Eh8 9LW UK
Keywords:
ANIMALS, Action Selection, Agent Architectures,
Animal Behavior, Animal Simulations, Authors!Tyrrell,
Behavioral Choice, C!Code, Computer Simulation, Environments,
Mechanisms, PhD Thesis, Simulation!Animal Behavior
References:
Tyrrell, T. and Mayhew, J.E.W. 1991. Computer Simulation of an Animal
Environment. In {\it Proceedings of the First International Conference on
Simulation of Adaptive Behavior}. Meyer, J-A. and Wilson, S.W. (eds). MIT
Press/Bradford Books.
Tyrrell, T. 1992. Defining the Action Selection Problem. In the {\it
Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science
Society}. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Tyrrell, T. 1993. The Use of Hierarchies for Action Selection. In the
{Journal of Adaptive Behavior}, {\bf 1}:4, 1993, to appear. Also in the
{\it Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Simulation of
Adaptive Behavior}. Meyer, J-A., Wilson, S.W. and Roitblat, H. (eds). MIT
Press/Bradford Books, 1993.
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