For example, baby seagulls in the nest recognize their mothers as anything that has a pointed shape and a red dot near the point. Homing in on a shape and a color requires much less processing and is far more likely to succeed in real time than analyzing an entire visual field, which is how early work in robotics processed sensory data. Of course, as with the ants, quick classification heuristics can get you into trouble. Of course, the mart problem is one of integration. Both areas should probably keep tabs on the other.
Classification is the key to intentional action.
And increasingly, those classifications need to happen in real time. If we are to learn from robotics, we should probably focus on lightweight classification heuristics, which have an increased computational speed that more than offsets any increase in the error rate. The classic example of realtime classification in B2C is to suggest additional shopping cart items based on items the customer previously selected. We could do far more. Or the site could offer specials as a function of some realtime analysis of a shopping basket's contents.