Developmental robotics: Difference between revisions

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'''Developmental Robotics''' (DevRob), sometimes called '''epigenetic robotics''', is a scientific field which aims at studying the developmental mechanisms, architectures and constraints that allow lifelong and open-ended learning of new skills and new knowledge in embodied machines. As in human children, learning is expected to be cumulative and of progressively increasing complexity, and to result from self-exploration of the world in combination with social interaction. The typical methodological approach consists in starting from theories of human and animal development elaborated in fields such as developmental psychology, neuroscience, developmental and evolutionary biology, and linguistics, then to formalize and implement them in robots, sometimes exploring extensions or variants of them. The experimentation of those models in robots allows researchers to confront them with reality, and as a consequence developmental robotics also provides feedback and novel hypothesis on theories of human and animal development.

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=== Skill domains ===

Due to the general approach and methodology, developmental robotics projects typically focus on having robots develop the same types of skills as human infants. A first category that is importantly being investigated is the acquisition of sensorimotor skills. These include the discovery of one's own body, including its structure and dynamics such as hand-eyehand–eye coordination, locomotion, and interaction with objects as well as tool use, with a particular focus on the discovery and learning of affordances. A second category of skills targeted by developmental robots are social and linguistic skills: the acquisition of simple social behavioural games such as turn-taking, coordinated interaction, lexicons, syntax and grammar, and the grounding of these linguistic skills into sensorimotor skills (sometimes referred as symbol grounding). In parallel, the acquisition of associated cognitive skills are being investigated such as the emergence of the self/non-self distinction, the development of attentional capabilities, of categorization systems and higher-level representations of affordances or social constructs, of the emergence of values, empathy, or theories of mind.

=== Mechanisms and constraints ===

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However, the interaction of those mechanisms in artificial organisms, developmental robots in particular, is still vastly understudied. The interaction of evolutionary mechanisms, unfolding morphologies and developing sensorimotor and social skills will thus be a highly stimulating topic for the future of developmental robotics.

==Main Journalsjournals==

* IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development: http://www.ieee-cis.org/pubs/tamd/

* AMD Newsletter: http://www.cse.msu.edu/amdtc/amdnl/

==Main Conferencesconferences==

* International Conference on Development and Learning: http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~triesch/icdl/

* Epigenetic Robotics: http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org/

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===Academic institutions and researchers in the field ===

* [http://www.iub.edu/~cogdev/ Cognitive Development Lab, University of Indiana, US]

* [[Michigan State University]] --– [http://www.cse.msu.edu/ei Embodied Intelligence Lab]

* [http://flowers.inria.Fr Inria and Ensta ParisTech FLOWERS team, France]: Exploration, interaction and learning in developmental robotics

* [http://www.isi.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ University of Tokyo—Intelligent Systems and Informatics Lab]

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* [http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/SOCCE/CRNS/ Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems], [http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/ Plymouth University] Plymouth, United Kingdom

* [http://www.istc.cnr.it/group/locen Laboratory of Computational Embodied Neuroscience], [http://www.istc.cnr.it/ Institute of Cognitive Science and Technologies] [http://www.cnr.it/sitocnr/home.html National Research Council], Rome, Italy

* [http://www-etis.ensea.fr/index.php/neuro-neurocybernetics.html Neurocybernetic team], ETIS Lab., ENSEA -– University of Cergy-Pontoise -– CNRS, France

=== Related large-scale projects ===

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The [http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~alex/classes/2005_Fall_610as/ first graduate course] in DevRob was offered at [[Iowa State University]] by Alexander Stoytchev in the Fall of 2005.

===Blogs and Otherother Linkslinks===

* The Mental Development Repository: http://www.mentaldev.org

* Developing Intelligence: http://develintel.blogspot.com