Architectures for Cognitive Systems

There has been increased interest recently in cognitive and behavior-based agent architectures and cognitive models of human behavior. This interest results in part from advances in agent technology, cognitive neuroscience and emotion research that make such models possible, and in part from maturing applications that require, or benefit from, the inclusion of different emotion-related aspects (e.g., adaptive human-computer interfaces, social and expressive robots, autonomous agents, decision support systems, etc). The objective of this paper is to present an architecture within which a large variety of modules/mechanisms are decomposed by function and structure and are interconnected by situated recomposition methods. The result of such recomposition is different types of perceptions, cognitive methods and behaviours. Another aspect is also presented which has not been commonly addressed in most architectures of this type: the distinction between cognition as a control structure for action selection, and the internal thinking for action anticipation, evaluation, imagination, curiosity etc.