Braitenberg vehicle

A Braitenberg vehicle is an imaginary robot or creature used as the subject of a thought experiment to study embodied cognition. It was introduced by the ItaliancyberneticistValentino Braitenberg in his 1984 book Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology. In the thought experiment, a vehicle equipped with sensors and actuators moves through a hypothetical environment, where orienting behaviors such as pursuit or avoidance are achieved by differential steering based on sensory input. A researcher may then analyze the vehicle's behavior to better understand how it relates to the wiring. Braitenberg presented fourteen vehicle types of increasing complexity, from simple creatures that demonstrate phototaxis to complex creatures that show behavior suggestive of psychological phenomena, such the formation of concepts and generation of ideas. The thought experiment has been used in neuroscience, artificial life, and robotics, in simulated and real environments.