Making predictions in an uncertain world: Environmental structure and cognitive maps

This article examines the relationship between environmental and cognitive structure. One of the key tasks for any agent interacting in the real world is the management of uncertainty; because of this the cognitive structures which interact with real environments, such as would be used in navigation , must effectively cope with the uncertainty inherent in a constantly chang ing world. Despite this uncertainty however, real environments usually affo rd structure that can be effectively exploited by organisms. The article ex amines environmental characteristics and structures that enable humans to s urvive and thrive in a wide range of real environments. The relationship be tween these characteristics and structures, uncertainty, and cognitive stru cture is explored in the context of PLAN, a proposed model of human cogniti ve mapping, and R-PLAN, a version of PLAN that has been instantiated on an actual mobile robot. An examination of these models helps to provide insigh t into environmental characteristics which impact human performance on task s which require interaction with the world.