Fallas Hernández, EmanuelMartínez-Alonso, SergioBecerra Permuy, José AntonioRomero, AlejandroDuro, Richard J.2026-09-102026-09-102025Fallas-Hernández, E., Martínez Alonso, S., Becerra Permuy, J., Romero, A., & Duro, R. J. (2026). Mechanisms for Autonomous Sub-goal Discovery in Lifelong Robotic Learning. In Proceedings XoveTIC 2025: Impulsando el talento científico (pp. 333-340). Servizo de Publicacións UDC. https://doi.org/10.17979/spu.23.c53978-84-9749-925-5https://hdl.handle.net/2183/49195Presentado en: VIII Congreso Xove TIC: impulsando el talento científico. Octubre, 2025, A Coruña.[Abstract] Lifelong learning in robotics seeks the continuous acquisition and reuse of knowledge to autonomously master complex tasks. A key challenge is discovering sub-goals without relying on explicit intermediate rewards, enabling robots to decompose tasks and transfer skills across domains. We propose a dual mechanism for sub-goal discovery. The first is a top-down strategy that builds hierarchical sub-goal chains from general goals via intrinsic motivations. The second is a bottom-up approach that uncovers latent links between previously learned goals and perceptual classes. Implemented in the e-MDB cognitive architecture, our method was tested in both simulation and a real-world robotic manipulation task. Results show efficient sub-goal generation, transfer, and generalization.engAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Lifelong learning cognitive architecturesRobotsGoal formationconference outputopen access10.17979/spu.23.c53