Beyond Tasks: A Vision for Reproducing an Animal-like Behavioral Substrate Using Modern Robot Learning Techniques
Recent advances in robot learning have produced increasingly capable embodied agents. Yet comparatively less attention has been given to a more basic form of competence that animals exhibit continuously: the ability to remain situated, responsive, and behaviorally coherent as physical, environmental, and social demands change over time. We propose the ethological behavioral substrate as a conceptual lens for studying this form of competence in artificial agents. Rather than treating these behaviors that animals exhibit as a set of isolated skills, we argue that their continual coordination under competing demands constitutes an important and underexplored target for modern robot learning....
| Authors | Samiyuru Menik, Hemadri Jayalath |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.RO |
| Published | 27 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 27 September 2026 |
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