1.1 --- a/thesis/cortex.org	Sun Apr 27 21:58:26 2014 -0400
     1.2 +++ b/thesis/cortex.org	Sun Apr 27 22:27:49 2014 -0400
     1.3 @@ -3381,23 +3381,38 @@
     1.4  
     1.5  * Contributions
     1.6    
     1.7 -  In this thesis you have seen the =CORTEX= system, a complete
     1.8 -  environment for creating simulated creatures. You have seen how to
     1.9 -  implement five senses: touch, proprioception, hearing, vision, and
    1.10 -  muscle tension. You have seen how to create new creatures using
    1.11 -  blender, a 3D modeling tool. I hope that =CORTEX= will be useful in
    1.12 -  further research projects. To this end I have included the full
    1.13 -  source to =CORTEX= along with a large suite of tests and examples. I
    1.14 -  have also created a user guide for =CORTEX= which is included in an
    1.15 -  appendix to this thesis.
    1.16 -
    1.17 -  You have also seen how I used =CORTEX= as a platform to attack the
    1.18 -  /action recognition/ problem, which is the problem of recognizing
    1.19 -  actions in video. You saw a simple system called =EMPATH= which
    1.20 -  identifies actions by first describing actions in a body-centered,
    1.21 -  rich sense language, then inferring a full range of sensory
    1.22 -  experience from limited data using previous experience gained from
    1.23 -  free play.
    1.24 +  The big idea behind this thesis is a new way to represent and
    1.25 +  recognize physical actions -- empathic representation. Actions are
    1.26 +  represented as predicates which have available the totality of a
    1.27 +  creature's sensory abilities. To recognize the physical actions of
    1.28 +  another creature similar to yourself, you imagine what they would
    1.29 +  feel by examining the position of their body and relating it to your
    1.30 +  own previous experience.
    1.31 +  
    1.32 +  Empathic description of physical actions is very robust and general.
    1.33 +  Because the representation is body-centered, it avoids the fragility
    1.34 +  of learning from example videos. Because it relies on all of a
    1.35 +  creature's senses, it can describe exactly what an action /feels
    1.36 +  like/ without getting caught up in irrelevant details such as visual
    1.37 +  appearance. I think it is important that a correct description of
    1.38 +  jumping (for example) should not waste even a single bit on the
    1.39 +  color of a person's clothes or skin; empathic representation can
    1.40 +  avoid this waste by describing jumping in terms of touch, muscle
    1.41 +  contractions, and the brief feeling of weightlessness. Empathic
    1.42 +  representation is very low-level in that it describes actions using
    1.43 +  concrete sensory data with little abstraction, but it has the
    1.44 +  generality of much more abstract representations!
    1.45 +
    1.46 +  Another important contribution of this thesis is the development of
    1.47 +  the =CORTEX= system, a complete environment for creating simulated
    1.48 +  creatures. You have seen how to implement five senses: touch,
    1.49 +  proprioception, hearing, vision, and muscle tension. You have seen
    1.50 +  how to create new creatures using blender, a 3D modeling tool.
    1.51 +
    1.52 +  I hope that =CORTEX= will be useful in further research projects. To
    1.53 +  this end I have included the full source to =CORTEX= along with a
    1.54 +  large suite of tests and examples. I have also created a user guide
    1.55 +  for =CORTEX= which is included in an appendix to this thesis.
    1.56  
    1.57    As a minor digression, you also saw how I used =CORTEX= to enable a
    1.58    tiny worm to discover the topology of its skin simply by rolling on
    1.59 @@ -3411,7 +3426,9 @@
    1.60       creatures using Blender, a free 3D modeling program.
    1.61  
    1.62     - =EMPATH=, which uses =CORTEX= to identify the actions of a
    1.63 -     worm-like creature using a computational model of empathy.
    1.64 +     worm-like creature using a computational model of empathy. This
    1.65 +     empathic representation of actions is an important new kind of
    1.66 +     representation for physical actions.
    1.67  
    1.68  #+BEGIN_LaTeX
    1.69  \newpage