From Perception to Action: The Right Direction?

The underlying hypothesis of this paper is that there is no linear sequence leading from "perception to action" as the title of the conference suggests but that there is a continuous ongoing co-ordination. Rather the title should be interpreted as a design heuristic: instead of starting with "perception" we should start with "action". This perspective prevents us from overdesign and leads to "ecologically balanced systems". Keywords INFORMATION PROCESSING - ECOLOGICALLY BALANCED SYSTEMS - DESIGN HEURISTICS 1 The information processing metaphor In psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and robotics the predominant paradigm has been, and still is, the one of information processing. It is schematically depicted in Figure 1. There is some input from the environment through the sensors, the input is processed in various ways, and a motor output is generated. An example would be that the agent, in this case a human, sits at the bar. Through the eyes information is transmit..