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Addressing the Symbol Grounding Problem in VR

Authors:
Muneo Kitajima
Makoto Toyota
Katsuko T. Nakahira

Keywords: The Symbol Grounding Problem; Meme; Virtual Reality; Artificial Intelligence; MHP/RT; Structured Meme Theory.

Abstract:
A Virtual Reality (VR) environment presents objects that the user perceives and interacts with. It then transitions to the next state, reflecting the content of the interaction that has occurred as a result of the user’s perception of the objects. For the interaction between the VR environment and the user to continue seamlessly, the meanings assigned to the objects in the VR environment by the creator of VR applications and the meanings held by the user experiencing them must be consistent. In this study, we propose a method to realize seamless interaction between VR environments and users by considering the objects presented by VR environments as symbols and capturing the relationship between the meanings they contain and the meanings held by the users who experience them through the symbol grounding problem, which is regarded as a challenging issue in the field of artificial intelligence. Based on the Mode Human Processor with Realtime Constraints (MHP/RT), which is a cognitive architecture that can deal with action selections in everyday environments, we focus on the fact that the content of human action selections is based on memes that are handed down from generation to generation and should provide a basis for his/her understanding of the situation of the surrounding world, and suggest that the symbol grounding problem can be solved by observing and identifying memes.

Pages: 56 to 62

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2025

Publication date: April 6, 2025

Published in: conference

ISBN: 978-1-68558-266-1

Location: Valencia, Spain

Dates: from April 6, 2025 to April 10, 2025