Modularity and Specialized Learning: Reexamining Behavior-Based Artificial Intelligence

Learning, like any search, is only tractable if it is tightly focused. Modularity can provide the information a learning system needs by supporting specialized representation. Behavior-based artificial intelligence is a well-known modular theory of intelligent design, but has not been used systematically in this way. This paper describes a new design methodology, behavior-oriented design (BOD), which does. Examples drawn from mobile robotics and models of learning in non-human primates show the diversity of information this approach supports, from implicit and perceptual learning to tasks, maps and relationships.