What is “a synthetic sensory-motor system”?
Living entities sense their environment, and move around in that environment in order to achieve various goals. The sensory part detects some form of variable flux (such as changing energy fields or electrical or material gradients) imp inging on sensors, and the motor part refers to moving part or all of the system around. Sensing the environment, and moving around in it are not separate: movement moves the sensors, and alters what they receive. Sensory systems are very varied: at one extreme, micro -organisms directly sense concentration gradients, and move within them, and at the other extreme, eye and head movement is a crucial aspect of human visual perception. What matters is that the movement and the sense organ are integrated in time: sensory-motor systems are real-time systems. A synthetic sensory-motor system is like the biological sensory-motor systems, but built, rather than grown. Animals have developed senses based on pressure waves (hearing, bat sonar), light (vision), t
