ECCEROBOT · Embodied Cognition in a Compliantly Engineered Robot

Standard humanoid robots mimic the human form, but the mechanisms used in such robots are very different from those in humans, and the characteristics of the robots reflect this. This places severe limitations on the kinds of interactions such robots can engage in, on the knowledge they can acquire of their environment, and therefore on the nature of their cognitive engagement with the environment. However, a new kind of robot is just beginning to emerge - the anthropomimetic robot. Instead of just copying the outward form of a human, it copies the inner structures and mechanisms - bones, joints, muscles, and tendons, and thus has the potential for human-like action and interaction in the world. Unfortunately, there are as yet no established methods for controlling such robots, nor even for describing their intrinsic movement patterns. This project has three goals: to design and build a robot using anthropomimetic principles; to characterise its dynamics and control it; and to exploit its human-like characteristics to produce some human-like cognitive features. The consortium already has access to an excellent anthropomimetic torso design; this will be further developed to include significant engineering refinements, and will be mounted on a powered mobile chassis to permit mobile manuipulation. Advanced techniques of motion capture and causal analysis will characterise the robot's intrinsic dynamics. Three major approaches to control will then be assessed: classical control theory, the use of physics based internal models, and sensory-motor strategies. These will be combined in a single architecture to cope with different types of tasks, and the consortium will then focus on the use the robot can make of its human-like interaction with the world to begin to cognise the world in a human-like way. Finally, the performance of the robot will be evaluated, both absolutely, and in comparison with the relevant outputs from the EU RobotCub project.