Imitation in Animals and Artifacts
Imitation in Animals and Artifacts by Kerstin Dautenhahn, published by MIT Press on June 21, 2002, is a comprehensive exploration of the concept of imitation across various disciplines. This reprint edition spans 626 pages and is presented in English. The book offers an interdisciplinary overview of current research on imitation, drawing insights from fields such as animal behavior, artificial intelligence, computer science, and neuroscience.
Readers will find a detailed examination of how imitation plays a crucial role in enabling both biological and artificial agents to learn and interact. The text discusses the significance of imitation in fostering social relationships and skill-sharing among agents, whether they are human or robotic. It addresses the complexities involved in developing software and robots capable of imitating actions, highlighting the challenges of perception and context that are navigated by animals in nature.
Official synopsis Publisher
An interdisciplinary overview of current research on imitation in animals and artifacts.
The effort to explain the imitative abilities of humans and other animals draws on fields as diverse as animal behavior, artificial intelligence, computer science, comparative psychology, neuroscience, primatology, and linguistics. This volume represents a first step toward integrating research from those studying imitation in humans and other animals, and those studying imitation through the construction of computer software and robots.
Imitation is of particular importance in enabling robotic or software agents to share skills without the intervention of a programmer and in the more general context of interaction and collaboration between software agents and humans. Imitation provides a way for the agent—whether biological or artificial—to establish a “social relationship” and learn about the demonstrator’s actions, in order to include them in its own behavioral repertoire. Building robots and software agents that can imitate other artificial or human agents in an appropriate way involves complex problems of perception, experience, context, and action, solved in nature in various ways by animals that imitate.
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