Evolution of Communication and Language in Embodied Agents

This field of research examines how embodied and situated agents, such as robots, evolve language and thus communicate with each other. This book is a comprehensive survey of the research in this emerging field.

The contributions explain the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field, and then illustrate the scientific and technological potentials and promising research directions. The book also provides descriptions of research experiments and related open software and hardware tools, allowing the reader to gain a practical knowledge of the topic.

The book will be of interest to scientists and undergraduate and graduate students in the areas of cognition, artificial life, artificial intelligence and linguistics.

From the reviews:

“One of the most challenging problems in human cognition is the origin of language. ... The editors of this book have brought together two communities of researchers to record the current state of the research agenda and report some recent advances. ... This volume is a fascinating summary of the state of the art in a challenging area of research. It serves as a sobering reminder of how far we are from a consistent bottom-up explanation of the wonder of human language.” (H. Van Dyke Parunak, ACM Computing Reviews, December, 2010)