AN INTEGRATION OF TWO CONTROL ARCHITECTURES OF ACTION SELECTION AND NAVIGATION INSPIRED BY NEURAL CIRCUITS IN THE VERTEBRATES: THE BASAL GANGLIA

A control architecture of action selection, inspired by the neural loops of the dorsal part of the basal ganglia -subcortical nuclei of the vertebrate’s brain- was proved to be able to solve a minimum survival task. The present paper concerns the connection of this architecture with a navigation system. This connection is inspired by recent hypotheses concerning the role of a ventral nucleus of the basal ganglia in integrating spatial, motivational and sensorimotor information. The ventral loop selects locomotion actions generated by various navigation strategies and modulated by motivations. The dorsal loop is in charge of non-spatial task selection and of coordination with the ventral loop. Implemented in a simulated robot performing the same survival task as in the previous experiment, the whole architecture improves the robot’s survival thanks to map building and path planning abilities. Furthermore, the robot is also able to occasionally overlook the information recorded in its cognitive map in order to behave opportunistically, i.e. to reach an unexpected but visible resource, instead of a memorized but remote one. These results are discussed in terms of biological and robotic contributions.