A Challenge to Adaptability: Learning From the Octopus
Shuichi FUKUDA · 2019
Abstract Our World is expanding very rapidly, and unpredictable changes occur frequently and extensively. Yesterday, our world was small and closed with boundaries. So, we could use past experience as knowledge and solve the problems. But today, our world is an open world without boundaries. And the environment and situations change in an unpredictable manner. So, knowledge does not work anymore. The octopus does not transfer knowledge from generation to generation. They live on their own instinct alone. But they are known to adapt to the unpredictable environments and situations very well. They demonstrate the importance of direct interaction with the outside world. Movement is taken up, because movement is essential for machines and humans. Machines only move as instructed, but in the case of humans, they need to coordinate and balance many body parts to move as they wish. So, they have to proceed by trial and error. This is indeed what the octopus is doing.In this paper, a new performance indicator is proposed. It combines Mahanalobis Distance with movement patterns. This approach provides us with a movement performance measure in a unitless and quantitative manner in a very simple way. Thus, we can understand if we are doing better or worse so we can adapt to the changing situations more reasonably and in shorter time.