The contribution of the body to cognition and control; In natural and artificial, agents are increasingly described as 'offloading computation from the brain to the body', the body is said to perform 'morphological computation'. The investigation of 4 characteristic cases of morphological computation in animals & robots show that the 'offloading' perspective is misleading. The contribution of body morphology to cognition and control is rarely computational. 1) Morphology that assists control & the rare cases 2) Morphology that assists perception 3) morphological computation proper, like reservoir computing where the body is actually used for computation, This result contributes to understanding of the relation between embodiment and computation: the question for robot design and cognitive science isn't whether computation is offloaded to the body; but to which extent the body facilitates cognition & control - how it contributes to the overall orchestration of intelligent behavior.
