Robotic puppies exhibiting a form of artificial curiosity are being developed at Sony’s research and development lab in Paris, France.

The Aibo pups display an innate artificial curiosity similar to that seen in baby animals. They slowly learn to explore the surrounding world, before playing with toys and trying to communicate with other Aibo dogs.

Each of the new Aibo dogs was given two software control mechanisms. Firstly, a “low-level learning system” which controls simple behaviour but also tries to predict how this will affect the surrounding sensory world – how kicking a ball will cause it to move across the floor, for example. Secondly, a “meta-learning system” which analyses the accuracy of predictions made by the low-level system and controls overall “motivation.”

Interaction between these two components is critical to the reprogrammed Aibos’ uncannily inquisitive nature. The meta-learning system prompts the robot dogs to pursue behaviors that they can rapidly learn to predict, but which also have maximum learning potential. This tends to makes the robot dogs inherently curious, seeking out increasingly complicated scenarios with which to interact. But it also means they will effectively become bored with activities that do not stimulate them to their, albeit artificial, satisfaction.