Embodied Artificial Intelligence On the role of morphology and materials in the emergence of cognition*

In the cognitivistic paradigm, intelligence was viewed as algorithmic, an approach that has lead to many impressive results and applications. However, this view turned out to be too limited: If we are to understand natural forms of intelligence, embodiment must be taken into account. In this paper we explore the implications of embodiment by providing a number of case studies. One concept that we will investigate is “ecological balance”, i.e. the interplay of morphology, materials, and neural processing. We develop a method of how this can be systematically investigated using artificial evolution and morphogenesis