Self and Sense of Agency in Artificial Systems

By Guido Schillaci and Verena V Hafner

Recent advances in robotics and artificial intelligence enabled robots to not merely be programmed for a specific task, but adapt to their environment and own body autonomously. The inspiration for this open-ended development and learning comes from findings in developmental psychology on sensorimotor and social learning. Developing a sense of Self and a sense of agency is a crucial milestone towards autonomy and cognitive and social skills in both natural and artificial systems.By exploring and interacting with their surroundings, infants learn about their bodily capabilities and develop a sense of their body as an entity differentiated from the environment and that they can control. Neuroscientists identified a set of brain regions that would be involved in this subjective experience, and hypothesized on a range of processes that would produce it.This book will explain the development of the self and self-agency in humans, and discuss what could be transferred to artificial systems. The state of the art of research in developmental robotics related to the self will be illustrated with many examples.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9811283303
• ISBN13: 9789811283307
• Release Date: November 2026
• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
• Length: 200 Pages