Intelligent Behavior in Animals and Robots

Intelligence takes many forms. This exciting study explores the novel insight, basedon well-established ethological principles, that animals, humans, and autonomous robots can all beanalyzed as multi-task autonomous control systems. Biological adaptive systems, the authors argue,can in fact provide a better understanding of intelligence and rationality than that provided bytraditional AI.

In this technically sophisticated, clearly written investigationof robot-animal analogies, McFarland and Bösser show that a bee's accuracy in navigating on a cloudyday and a moth's simple but effective hearing mechanisms have as much to teach us about intelligentbehavior as human models. In defining intelligent behavior, what matters is the behavioral outcome,not the nature of the mechanism by which the outcome is achieved. Similarly, in designing robotscapable of intelligent behavior, what matters is the behavioral outcome.

McFarlandand Bösser address the problem of how to assess the consequences of robot behavior in a way that ismeaningful in terms of the robot's intended role, comparing animal and robot in relation to rationalbehavior, goal seeking, task accomplishment, learning, and other important theoreticalissues.

Thomas Bösser is Head of the Man Machine Research Group at Westfälische Wilhelms Universität, in Münster, and a partner in the consulting firm Advanced Concepts.