The term “affordance” denotes the behavioral meaning of objects. We propose a cognitive architecture for the detection of affordances in the visual modality. This model is based on the internal simulation of movement sequences. For each movement step, the resulting sensory state is predicted by a forward model, which in turn triggers the generation of a new (simulated) motor command by an inver...

When grasping an object, a robot must identify the available forms of interaction with that object. Each of these forms of interaction, a grasp affordance, describes one canonical option for placing the hand and fingers with respect to the object as an agent prepares to grasp it. The affordance does not represent a single hand posture, but an entire manifold within a space that describes hand p...

Design knowledge reuse is widely accepted as an effective strategy for designers to develop robust artifacts with less time and lower cost. However, there has been very little research on how to help designers capture detailed design knowledge for reuse. As a result, most detailed design knowledge still has to remain in designers’ memories as tacit knowledge, which can easily get lost due to ob...

The Information systems (IS) literature explains how specific digital characteristics enable structural generativity, i.e. “a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through contributions from broad and varied audiences” (Zittrain, 2008: p.70). This resonates well with innovation literature, which emphasizes the combinatorial aspect of innovation and the value of open and distributed ...

The concept of the extended mind, as introduced by Clark and Chalmers (1998) was meant in part to move beyond the standard Cartesian idea that cognition is something that happens in a private mental space, “in the head.” Elsewhere (Gallagher 2011; Gallagher and Crisafi 2009), I’ve pursued a liberal interpretation of the extended mind, suggesting that we consider cognitive processes as constitut...