Robot Metacognition: Decision Making with Confidence for Tool Invention

Abstract

Robots today often miss a key ingredient of truly intelligent behavior: the ability to reflect on their own cognitive processes and decisions. In humans, this self-monitoring or metacognition is crucial for learning, decision making and problem solving. For instance, they can evaluate how confident they are in performing a task, thus regulating their own behavior and allocating proper resources. Taking inspiration from neuroscience, we propose a robot metacognition architecture centered on confidence (a second-order judgment on decisions) and we demonstrate it on the use case of autonomous tool invention. We propose the use of confidence as a metacognitive measure within the robot decision making scheme. Confidence-informed robots can evaluate the reliability of their decisions, improving their robustness during real-world physical deployment. This form of robotic metacognition emphasizes embodied action monitoring as a means to achieve better informed decisions. We also highlight potential applications and research directions for robot metacognition.