Quantifying morphological computation

The field of embodied intelligence emphasises the importance of the morphology and environment with respect to the behaviour of a cognitive system. The contribution of the morphology to the behaviour, commonly known as morphological computation, is well-recognised in this community. We believe that the field would benefit from a formalisation of this concept as we would like to ask how much the morphology and the environment contribute to an embodied agent's behaviour, or how an embodied agent can maximise the exploitation of its morphology within its environment.

In my talk, I will present first steps towards a quantification of morphological computation in the context of embodied intelligence. I will propose various corresponding measures which are validated in simple experiments, thereby identifying their individual strengths and weaknesses. This is joint work with Nihat Ay.

Zahedi K, Ay N. Quantifying Morphological Computation, Entropy, 2013, 15(5):1887-1915.