Memory-Based Cognitive Framework: A Low-Level Association Approach to Cognitive Architectures

At its most fundamental, cognition as displayed by biological agents (such as humans) may be described as being the manipulation and utilisation of memory. A low-level approach to the associative sensory-motor development of cognition is then appropriate, rather than the more common higher-level functional approach. A novel theoretical framework – the memory-based cognitive framework (MBCF) – is proposed based upon these considerations. A computational architecture based on the MBCF is implemented on a mobile robot platform, and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the functionality of the architecture. It is shown that this low-level, bottom-up, approach can produce adaptive behaviours, which may ultimately form the foundation of cognitively flexible agents.