Constraints on Body Movement during Visual Development Affect Behavior of Evolutionary Robots

We explore the role of active body movement in the developmental process of the visual system. Receptive fields of an evolved mobile robot are developed during active or passive movement with the generalized Hebbian algorithm (Sanger, 1989). In accordance to experimental observations of kitten, we show that the receptive fields and behavior of the robot developed under active condition significantly differ from those developed under passive condition. A possible explanation of this difference is derived by correlating receptive field formation and behavioral performance in the two conditions.