Recent talks from the OREL YouTube channel

Over the past several months, we have been busy presenting at the Active Inference Institute’s Symposium and the Embodied Intelligence 2026 Workshop. In November, the Active Inference Institute was held via YouTube stream, and we presented two talks. The first was on spatial navigation in computational agents (cybernetics interest group) and the second was on the Open-source Sustainability project (open-source and representational brains and phenotypes interest groups).

“Neurosimulation of Spatial Intelligence: interdisciplinary underpinnings”

The first talk focused on the neurosimulation of spatial intelligence, with examples from Vehicle-like models. The talk presented a broad sweep of interdisciplinary components that allow us to understand the essence of spatial intelligence.

“Open-source Sustainability: progress and connections to ActInf”

The second talk was an overview of our open-source sustainability project. Of particular interest is the mathematical connection between Reinforcement Learning models, Active Inference, and how to model motivations in open-source projects.

“Embodied Models from the 80s: how they influenced today”

The third talk is a fun excursion into the historical underpinnings of embodied intelligence. We can trace this history to a period from 1984–1993, where influences from cognitive science, biocybernetics, mechanical engineering, computer graphics, and complexity theory converged. This period was particularly fertile in terms of introducing core models and ideas that influence embodied intelligence work today.