Perception

Perception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sense organs. For example, vision involves light striking the retina of the eye, smell is mediated by odor molecules, and hearing involves pressure waves. Perception is not the passive receipt of these signals, but is shaped by learning, memory, expectation, and attention.

Perception can be split into two processes Firstly processing sensory input which transforms these low-level information to higher-level information (e.g., extracts shapes for object recognition). Secondly processing which is connected with person's concept and expectations (knowledge), and selective mechanisms (attention) that influence perception.

Perception depends on complex functions of the nervous system, but subjectively seems mostly effortless because this processing happens outside conscious awareness.

Percept (disambiguation)

Percept may refer to:

Percept (artificial intelligence)

A percept is the input that an intelligent agent is perceiving at any given moment. It is essentially the same concept as a percept in psychology, except that it is being perceived not by the brain but by the agent. A percept is detected by a sensor, often a camera, processed accordingly, and acted upon by an actuator. Each percept is added to a percept sequence, which is a complete history of each percept ever detected. An intelligent agent chooses how to act not only based on the current percept, but the percept sequence. The next action is chosen by the agent function, which maps every percept to an action.

For example, if a camera were to record a gesture, the agent would process the percepts, calculate the corresponding spatial vectors, examine its percept history, and use the agent program (the application of the agent function) to act accordingly.

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