Related papers: Active exploration for body model learning through…
Humans and animals excel in combining information from multiple sensory modalities, controlling their complex bodies, adapting to growth, failures, or using tools. These capabilities are also highly desirable in robots. They are displayed…
In this paper we present a neurally plausible model of robot reaching inspired by human infant reaching that is based on embodied artificial intelligence, which emphasizes the importance of the sensory-motor interaction of an agent and the…
Safe human-robot interactions require robots to be able to learn how to behave appropriately in \sout{humans' world} \rev{spaces populated by people} and thus to cope with the challenges posed by our dynamic and unstructured environment,…
The young infant explores its body, its sensorimotor system, and the immediately accessible parts of its environment, over the course of a few months creating a model of peripersonal space useful for reaching and grasping objects around it.…
One effective approach for equipping artificial agents with sensorimotor skills is to use self-exploration. To do this efficiently is critical, as time and data collection are costly. In this study, we propose an exploration mechanism that…
Palpation, the use of touch in medical examination, is almost exclusively performed by humans. We investigate a proof of concept for an artificial palpation method based on self-supervised learning. Our key idea is that an encoder-decoder…
Reusing the tactile knowledge of some previously-explored objects helps us humans to easily recognize the tactual properties of new objects. In this master thesis, we enable arobotic arm equipped with multi-modal artificial skin, like…
Tactile perception is important for robotic systems that interact with the world through touch. Touch is an active sense in which tactile measurements depend on the contact properties of an interaction--e.g., velocity, force,…
General robot manipulation requires the handling of previously unseen objects. Learning a physically accurate model at test time can provide significant benefits in data efficiency, predictability, and reuse between tasks. Tactile sensing…
Inspired by infant development, we propose a Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework for autonomous self-exploration in a robotic agent, Baby Sophia, using the BabyBench simulation environment. The agent learns self-touch and hand regard…
Providing artificial agents with the same computational models of biological systems is a way to understand how intelligent behaviours may emerge. We present an active inference body perception and action model working for the first time in…
The skin of humanoid robots often lacks human tactility and the inherent self-repair capability of biological tissues. Recently, researchers have grown a living, self-healing skin on a robot finger by subsequent culturing of human dermal…
Physical interactive robotics, ranging from wearable devices to collaborative humanoid robots, require close coordination between mechanical design and control. However, evaluating interactive dynamics is challenging due to complex human…
Neurocognitive models of higher-level somatosensory processing have emphasised the role of stored body representations in interpreting real-time sensory signals coming from the body (Longo, Azanon and Haggard, 2010; Tame, Azanon and Longo,…
Infants often exhibit goal-directed behaviors, such as reaching for a sensory stimulus, even when no external reward criterion is provided. These intrinsically motivated behaviors facilitate spontaneous exploration and learning of the body…
We present a computational model of the mechanisms that may determine infants' behavior in the "mobile paradigm". This paradigm has been used in developmental psychology to explore how infants learn the sensory effects of their actions. In…
We review computational and robotics models of early language learning and development. We first explain why and how these models are used to understand better how children learn language. We argue that they provide concrete theories of…
Robots operating in an open world will encounter novel objects with unknown physical properties, such as mass, friction, or size. These robots will need to sense these properties through interaction prior to performing downstream tasks with…
To coordinate actions with an interaction partner requires a constant exchange of sensorimotor signals. Humans acquire these skills in infancy and early childhood mostly by imitation learning and active engagement with a skilled partner.…
Previous humanoid robot research works treat the robot as a bipedal mobile manipulation platform, where only the feet and hands contact the environment. However, we humans use all body parts to interact with the world, e.g., we sit in…