Robot Enhanced Mobility: The Capacity for Your Infants to Learn Real World Navigation, and its Effect on Perception, Action and Cognition Development

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An infant's development emerges from exploration of the world. Over the first 6 months, infants use their reaching and grasping as the tools to explore nearby spaces. By the first year, independent mobility emerges and they use crawling and walking to explore distant locations. Not surprisingly, independent mobility is linked to widespread advances in cognitive development and learning abilities. Previous work by this research team with a joystick-driven, robot-enhanced mobility device suggests that young infants may have the learning ability and motivation to be mobile months before they walk. This current project will formally test whether young infants have the capacity to be trained to drive a mobile robot, and will determine the effects of these early experiences with mobility on their development. Specifically, the project will longitudinally track infants' navigation skill and general development as they are trained to drive a mobile robot, which is designed to aid their learning, maintain their safety and record their driving performance.The broader impacts of this project stem from the unique collaboration of robotics and infant development. Scientifically, this project will provide the foundational database for future studies of the effects of early mobility on infant learning and development. This project will also advance the design of developmentally inspired robotics, and provide guideposts for the design and construction of robots that effectively interact with young children. Educationally, the project will foster creative collaborations between students of engineering and child development. Furthermore, the interaction of robots and infants will be used as a model to expose students of various ages to the fun, excitement and satisfaction of science and engineering. Specific activities include robotics design classes including a campus-wide design contest, short course for high school teachers, seminar for child care providers, web cast seminars in rehabilitation robotics, and a video/CD-ROM on developmentally inspired robotics. A focus will be on exposing under-represented groups to the discovery of science. Finally, the project has therapeutic impacts. Infants who will not walk due to severe brain or bone disorders must wait until they are 3 years of age, if not much older, before a power wheelchair is available. This project with typically developing infants will pave the way for a large study of the developmental effects of providing special needs infants with safe, fun and effective mobility for real world exploration within the first year of life.