disambiguating HPCT artificial intelligence architecture

Here is an example of a robot which implements HPCT and addresses some of the issues relevant to your project, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtYu53dKz2Q.

It is interesting to see a comparison of these two paradigms, as they both approach the field of AI at a similar level, that of embodied agents exhibiting simple behaviors. However, there are some fundamental differences between the two which means that any comparison will be biased towards one or the other depending upon the criteria chosen.

The main difference is of biological plausibility. Subsumption architecture, although inspired by some aspects of biological systems, is not intended to theoretically represent such systems. PCT, on the hand, is exactly that; a theory of how living systems work.

As far as PCT is concerned then, the most important criterion is whether or not the paradigm is biologically plausible, and criteria such as accuracy and complexity are irrelevant.

The other main difference is that Subsumption concerns action selection whereas PCT concerns control of perceptions (control of output versus control of input), which makes any comparison on other criteria problematic.

I had a few specific comments about your dissertation on points that may need
clarification or may be typos.

• “creatures will attempt to reach their ultimate goals through
  alternating their behaviour” – do you mean altering?

• “Each virtual machine’s output or error signal is the reference signal of the machine below it” – A reference signal can be a function of one or more output signals from higher-level systems, so more strictly this would be, “Each virtual machine’s output or error signal contributes to the reference signal of a machine at a lower level”.

• “The major difference here is that Subsumption does not incorporate the ideas of ‘conflict’ ” – Well, it does as the purpose of prioritising the different layers, and sub-systems, is to avoid conflict. Conflict is implicit, as there is not a dedicated system to handle conflicts.

• “‘reorganization’ which require considering the goals of other layers.” This doesn’t quite capture the meaning of reorganisation. Reorganisation happens when there is prolonged error in perceptual control systems, and is a process whereby the structure of the systems changes. So rather than just the reference signals changing the connections between systems or the gain of the systems will change.

• “Design complexity: this is an essential property for both theories.” Rather than an essential property, in the sense of being required, it is a characteristic, though it is an important property to consider with respect to the implementation or usability of a theory. Complexity, though, has no bearing on the validity of the theory. I would say that PCT is a very simple theory, though complexity arises in defining the transfer functions, but this applies to any theory of living systems.

• “The following step was used to create avoidance behaviour:” Having multiple nodes for different speeds seem unnecessarily complex. With PCT it should only be necessary to have one such node, where the distance is controlled by varying the speed (which could be negative).

• Section 4.2.1 “For example, the avoidance VM tries to respond directly to certain intensity values with specific error values.” This doesn’t sound like PCT at all. With PCT, systems never respond with specific error (or output) values, but change the output in order to bring the intensity (in this case) input in to line with the reference.

• “Therefore, reorganisation is required to handle that conflicting behaviour. I”. If there is conflict reorganisation may be necessary if the current systems are not able to resolve that conflict. However, the result of reorganisation may be a set of systems that are able to resolve conflict. So, it can be possible to design systems that resolve conflict but do not require reorganisation. That is usually done with a higher-level control system, or set of systems; and should be possible in this case.

• In this section there is no description of what the controlled variables are, which is of concern. I would suggest being clear about what are goal (variables) of each of the systems.

• “Therefore, the designed behaviour is based on controlling reference values.” If it is only reference values that are altered then I don’t think it is accurate to describe this as ‘reorganisation’. Such a node would better be described as a “conflict resolution” node, which should be a higher-level control system.

• Figure 4.1. The links annotated as “error signals” are actually output signals. The error signals are the links between the comparator and the output.

• “the robot never managed to recover from that state of trying to reorganise the reference values back and forth.” I’d suggest the way to resolve this would be to have a system at a level above the conflicted systems, and takes inputs from one or both of them. The variable that it controls could simply be something like, ‘circular-motion-while-in-open-space’, and the input a function of the avoidance system perception and then a function of the output used as the reference for the circular motion system, which may result in a low, or zero, reference value, essentially switching off the system, thus avoiding conflict, or interference. Remember that a reference signal may be a weighted function of a number of output signals. Those weights, or signals, could be negative so inhibiting the effect of a signal resulting in suppression in a similar way to the Subsumption architecture.

• “In reality, HPCT cannot be implemented without the concept of reorganisation because conflict will occur regardless”. As described above HPCT can be implemented without reorganisation.

• “Looking back at the accuracy of this design, it is difficult to say that it can adapt.” Provided the PCT system is designed with clear controlled variables in mind PCT is highly adaptive, or resistant to the effects of disturbances, which is the PCT way of describing adaption in the present context.

In general, it may just require clarification in the text, but as there is a lack of description of controlled variables in the model of the PCT implementation and that, it seems, some ‘behavioural’ modules used were common to both implementations it makes me wonder whether PCT feedback systems were actually used or whether it was just the concept of the hierarchical architecture that was being contrasted with that of the Subsumption paradigm.

I am happy to provide more detail of HPCT implementation though it looks like this response is somewhat overdue and you’ve gone beyond that stage.