Embodied Intelligence in Physical, Social and Technological Environments

Abstract

The aim of this contribution is to highlight different aspects of embodied intelligence that add to a broader interdisciplinary perspective on this phenomenon. This article intends to bring together three forms of embodied intelligence from the fields of technology and social research, starting from robotics research that deals with the technical replication of organic bodies, to insights from the sociology of the body outlining the relevance of corporeality in social encounters, and finally to the forms of embodied intelligence in the connection of technical forms with organic bodies and their effects on the perception of self and others within the hybrid research field of "Bodies of Technologies". This tripartite division of embodied intelligence deals with the biophysiological properties of an organism in self-environment relationships (the subject of robotics research), the interaction of a being or system with other beings in self-environment relationships (the subject of the sociology of bodies), and finally, as a third, new level of embodied intelligence, the technically mediated experience of (virtual) self-environment relationships through the somatechnical fusion of bio- and socio-physical properties in human-machine hybrids is presented. Accordingly, the article will name the specificity of each form of embodied intelligence and trace the conditions and peculiarities in the gradual increase of complexity from simple to interactive and finally to virtual bodily intelligence.