Controller

An artificial human that controls its perceptions.

That is, an artificial human (or system) that acts in the world based upon the principles and architecture of perceptual control, as embodied by living systems.

The behaviour of living systems is a process of perceptual control. In other words, animals (humans included) act in the world in order to achieve and maintain perceptual variables at certain desired values. This is achieved by varying outputs in order to affect and control inputs (perceptions). This negative feedback process of perceptual control is in stark contrast to the conventional computational approach in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence of computing output or actions from input.

Typically the term Robot, represents an artificial system that blindly carries out a series of instructions with no regard to purpose. Consequently, the term does not capture the dynamic, purposeful nature of an artificial system based upon the principles of perceptual control.

So, just as computer now means an artificial system that performs computation once carried out by humans (who used to be known as computers), the word Controller is proposed as the term for an artificial system that performs the process of perceptual control.

For a more detailed description of perceptual control and the architecture for robotics and artificial systems see the paper, “A General Architecture for Robotics Systems : A Perception-based approach to Artificial Life“, Volume 23, Number 2, Artificial Life, 2017 .