An apparatus capable of sensing the presence of objects in its environment, cate gorizing these objects without a prior description of the categories to be expected, and controlling robotic effector mechanisms to respond differentially to such objects according to their categories. Such responses include sorting objects, rejecting objects of certain types, and detecting, novel or deviant objects. The invention includes a device called a 'classification n-tuple' (of which a 'classification couple' is a special case) capable of combining signals from two or more sensory modalities to arrive at the classification of an object.
CATEGORIZATION AUTOMATA EMPLOYING NEURONAL GROUP SELECTION WITH REENTRY