Learning Without Vision

What I worked on

Designed a minimal gym environment where an agent can move, eat, or stay still with an energy cost. Began exploring how it could develop curiosity or survival behavior without explicit sensing like vision or smell.

What I noticed

• Curiosity can be modeled through intrinsic motivation
• Doing nothing leads to death, creating implicit reward
• Survival drives can replace external rewards
• Energy minimization can motivate exploration

”Aha” Moment

That survival itself can serve as a continuous learning signal even without a defined goal.

What still feels messy

How to quantify curiosity beyond state prediction.

Next step

Review papers on survival-based exploration and intrinsic motivation.