Robotic autonomous behavior selection using episodic memory and attention system

Purpose This paper aims to focus on the autonomous behavior selection issue of robotics from the perspective of episodic memory in cognitive neuroscience with biology-inspired attention system. It instructs a robot to follow a sequence of behaviors. This is similar to human travel to a target location by guidance. Design/methodology/approach The episodic memory-driving Markov decision process is proposed to simulate the organization of episodic memory by introducing neuron stimulation mechanism. Based on the learned episodic memory, the robotic global planning method is proposed for efficient behaviors sequence prediction using bottom-up attention. Local behavior planning based on risk function and feasible paths is used for behavior reasoning under imperfect memory. Aiming at the problem of whole target selection under redundant environmental information, a top-down attention servo control method is proposed to effectively detect the target containing multi-parts and distractors which share same features with the target. Findings Based on the proposed method, the robot is able to accumulate experience through memory, and achieve adaptive behavior planning, prediction and reasoning between tasks, environment and threats. Experimental results show that the method can balance the task objectives, select the suitable behavior according to current environment. Originality/value The behavior selection method is integrated with cognitive levels to generate optimal behavioral sequence. The challenges in robotic planning under uncertainty and the issue of target selection under redundant environment are addressed.