Multimodal dynamics : self-supervised learning in perceptual and motor systems

This thesis presents a self-supervised framework for perceptual and motor learning based upon correlations in different sensory modalities. The brain and cognitive sciences have gathered an enormous body of neurological and phenomenological evidence in the past half century demonstrating the extraordinary degree of interaction between sensory modalities during the course of ordinary perception. We develop a framework for creating artificial perceptual systems that draws on these findings, where the primary architectural motif is the cross-modal transmission of perceptual information to enhance each sensory channel individually. We present self-supervised algorithms for learning perceptual grounding, intersensory influence, and sensorymotor coordination, which derive training signals from internal cross-modal correlations rather than from external supervision. Our goal is to create systems that develop by interacting with the world around them, inspired by development in animals. We demonstrate this framework with: (1) a system that learns the number and structure of vowels in American English by simultaneously watching and listening to someone speak. The system then cross-modally clusters the correlated auditory and visual data.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Coen, Michael Harlan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Whitman Richards and Howard Shrobe.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34022

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34022