Artificial Life

How does brain process the sensory information? How is the sensory information encoded in the brain? The only way to be certain of how information is stored and retrieved by the brain is to build a mechanical model of the brain. Since that is rather daunting task, field of Artificial Life (AL) emerged. Soft-AL doesn’t only concern itself with biological lifeform but uses computer simulations to understand general properties of automata that seem to exhibit life-like properties, e.g., Braitenberg vehicles which are reactive agents embedded in a simulated two dimensional environment and reacts to sensory stimuli to produce motor output.

I am interested in figuring out how to bring about a consistent integration of top-down contextuality (agent-environment interaction) and bottom-up organizing principles (how an agent dynamically organizes itself in order to meet the challenges introduced by a dynamic environment) for such autonomous agents.

I am also interested in evolutionary studies on population of such autonomous agents.