CSAIL Event Calendar: Previous Series

From biology to robots: the iCub project

Speaker: Giorgio Metta , Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) Robotics, Brain and Cognitive
Date: April 13 2011
Time: 2:00PM to 3:00PM
Location: Patil/ Kiva Sem Rm, Stata Bldg., Rm G449
Host: Lorenzo Rosasco, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia; CBCL, MIT

Abstract:Simulating and getting inspiration from biology is certainly not a new endeavor in robotics (Atkeson et al., 2000; Sandini, 1997; Metta et.al. 1999). However, the use of humanoid robots as tools to study human cognitive skills it is a relatively new area of the research which fully acknowledges the importance of embodiment and the interaction with the environment for the emergence of motor skills, perception, sensorimotor coordination, and cognition (Lungarella, Metta, Pfeifer, & Sandini, 2003). The guiding philosophy - and main motivation - is that cognition cannot be hand-coded but it has to be the result of a developmental process through which the system becomes progressively more skilled and acquires the ability to understand events, contexts, and actions, initially dealing with immediate situations and increasingly acquiring a predictive capability (Vernon, Metta Sandini, 2007).

To pursue this research, a humanoid robot (iCub) has been developed as result of the collaborative project RobotCub (http://www.icub.org) supported by the European Commission through the "Cognitive Systems and Robotics" Unit E5 of IST. The iCub has been designed with the goal of studying human cognition and therefore embeds a sophisticated set of sensors providing vision, touch, proprioception, audition as well as a large number of actuators (53) providing dexterous motor abilities. The project is "open", in the sense of open-source (under GPL), to build a critical mass of research groups contributing with their ideas and algorithms to advance knowledge on human cognition (N. Nosengo 2009).

The aim of the talk is to present approach and motivation, illustrate the technology, and show results (so far!).

See other events that are part of Brains and Machines Seminar Series 2010/2011

See other events happening in April 2011