Metasensor: a proposal for sensor evolution in robotics

Sensors play a fundamental role in achieving the complex behaviors typically found in biological organisms. However, their potential role in the design of artificial agents is often overlooked. This often results in the design of robots that are poorly adapted to the environment, compared to their biological counterparts. This paper proposes a formalization of a novel architectural component, called a metasensor, which enables a process of sensor evolution reminiscent of what occurs in living organisms. Even in online scenarios, the metasensor layer searches for the optimal interpretation of its input signals and then feeds them to the robotic agent to accomplish the assigned task.