Abstract
To explore issues of developmental structure, physical embodiment, integration of multiple sensory and motor systems, and social interaction, we have constructed an upper-torso humanoid robot called Cog. The robot has twenty-one degrees of freedom and a variety of sensory systems, including visual, auditory, vestibular, kinesthetic, and tactile senses. This chapter gives a background on the methodology that we have used in our investigations, highlights the research issues that have been raised during this project, and provides a summary of both the current state of the project and our long-term goals. We report on a variety of implemented visual-motor routines (smooth-pursuit tracking, saccades, binocular vergence, and vestibular-ocular and opto-kinetic reflexes), orientation behaviors, motor control techniques, and social behaviors (pointing to a visual target, recognizing joint attention through face and eye finding, imitation of head nods, and regulating interaction through expressive feedback). We further outline a number of areas for future research that will be necessary to build a complete embodied system.
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Brooks, R.A., Breazeal, C., Marjanović, M., Scassellati, B., Williamson, M.M. (1999). The Cog Project: Building a Humanoid Robot. In: Nehaniv, C.L. (eds) Computation for Metaphors, Analogy, and Agents. CMAA 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1562. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48834-0_5
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