Animat

Animat are artificial animals and is a contraction of animal and materials. The term includes physical robots and virtual simulations. The animat model includes features of a simple animal capable of interacting with its environment. It is, therefore, designed to simulate the ability to associate certain signals from the environment within a learning phase that indicate a potential for cognitive structure.

Animat research, a subset of Artificial Life studies, has become rather popular since Rodney Brooks' seminal paper "Intelligence without representation".