Project

Duncan the Highland Terrier

We are in the third year of a multi-year project to see how close we can come to building a synthetic canine whose everyday common sense, ability to learn, and ability to empathize approaches that of a real canine. The past year has been largely focused on dog learning and training. In particular, Duncan can be trained to do many of the same things that real dogs can do using a technique borrowed from real dog training, called "clicker-training." Technically, this requires him to do state-space discovery, behavioral adaptation, and motor learning in an integrated, goal-driven fashion. While we are continuing this work, we are also broadening our focus to examine issues of social behavior and learning as well as spatial learning. Two installations currently feature Duncan: sheep/dog: Trial By Eire, and Clicker By Eire.