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3.3 Perceptual Capabilities 63

has to be allocated at a higher perceptual level for deeper understanding of dy-
namic scenes.
The basic capabilities of a subject are
1. Sensing (measuring) some states of environmental conditions, of other ob-
jects/subjects in the environment, and of components of the subject state.
2. Storing results of previous sensing activities and linking them to overall situ-
ational aspects, to behavior decisions, and to resulting changes in states ob-
served.
3. Behavior generation depending on 1 and 2.
Step 2 may already require a higher developmental level not necessarily needed in
the beginning of an evolutionary biological process. For the technical systems of
interest here, this step is included right from the beginning by goal-oriented engi-
neering, since later capabilities of learning and social interaction have to rely on it.
Up to now, these steps are mostly provided by the humans developing the system.
They perform adaptations to changing environmental conditions and expand the
rule base for coping with varying environments. In these cases, only data logging is
performed by the system itself; the higher functions are provided by the developer
on this basis. Truly autonomous systems, however, should be able to perform more
and more of these activities by themselves; this will be discussed in the outlook at
the end of the book. The suggestion is that all rational mental processes can be de-
rived on this basis.
The decisive factors for these learning activities are (a) availability of time
scales and the scales for relations of interest, like spatial distances; (b) knowledge
about classes of objects and of subjects considered; (c) knowledge about perform-
ance indices; and (d) about value systems for behavior decisions; all these enter the
decision-making process.

3.3 Perceptual Capabilities

For biological systems, five senses have become proverbial: Seeing, hearing,
smelling, tasting, and touching. It is well known from modern natural sciences that
there are a lot more sensory capabilities realized in the wide variety of animals.
The proprioceptive systems telling the actual state of an articulated body and the
vestibular systems yielding information on a subject’s motion-state relative to iner-
tial space are but two essential ones widely spread. Ultrasound and magnetic and
infrared sensors are known to exist for certain species.
The sensory systems providing access to information about the world to animals
of a class (or to each individual in the class by its specific realization) are charac-
teristic of their potential behavioral capabilities. Beside body shape and the specific
locomotion system, the sensory capabilities and data processing as well as knowl-
edge association capabilities of a subject determine its behavior.
Perceptual capabilities will be treated separately for conventional sensors and the
newly affordable imaging sensors, which will receive most attention later on.