The semantics of SIT, STAND, and LIE embodied in robots

In this paper we demonstrate (1) how a group of embodied artificial
agents can learn to construct abstract conceptual representations
of body postures from their continuous sensorimotor
interaction with the environment, (2) how they can
metaphorically extend these bodily concepts to visual experiences
of external objects and (3) how they can use their acquired
embodied meanings for self-organizing a communication
system about postures and objects. For this, we endow
the agents with cognitive mechanisms and structures that are
instantiations of specific ideas in cognitive linguistics (namely
image schema theory) about how humans relate motor and visual
space. We show that the agents are indeed able to perform
well in the task and thus the experiment offers a concrete operationalization
of these theories and increases their explanatory
power.

Publication year:2009

Keywords:artificial intelligence, robotics, cognitive semantics, metaphor