Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2019, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (Engineering and Technology)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being widely applied to various practical problems, and researchers are working to address numerous issues facing the field. The organizational structure and learning mechanism of the memory is one such issue. A cognitive agent builds a representation of its environment and remembers its experiences to interpret its inputs and implements its goals through its actions. By doing so it demonstrates its intelligence (if any), and it is its learning mechanism, value system and sensory motor coordination that makes all this possible. Memory in a cognitive agent stores its knowledge, knowledge gained over a life-time of experiences in a specific environment. That is, memory includes the “facts”, the relationships between them, and the mechanism used to learn, recognize, and recall based on the agent's interaction with the world/environment. It remembers events that the agent experienced reflecting important actions and observations. It motivates the agent to do anything by providing assessment of the state of the environment and its own state. It allows it to plan and anticipate. And finally, it allows the agent to reflect on itself as an independent being. Hence, memory is critical for intelligence, for it is the memory that determines a cognitive agent's abilities and learning skills. Research has shown that while memory in humans can be classified into different types, based on factors such as their longevity and cognitive mechanisms used to create and retrieve them, they all are achieved using a similar underlying structure. The focus of this dissertation was on using this principle, i.e. different memories created using the same underlying structure, to implement memory for cognitive agents using a biologically plausible model of neuron. This work was an attempt to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing self-organizing memory structures capable of performing the various memory related tasks necessary for a cognitive agent using a c (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Wojciech Jadwisienczak (Advisor) Subjects: Electrical Engineering