Developmental algorithms for robotics: Understanding the world of objects, interactions and tools.

这个研究项目是一个心理学启发的研究，将婴儿游戏类比为自主的、自我激励的机器人学习其所在世界的局部物理的核心机制。我们注意到，婴儿和儿童在玩耍时表现出的自主学习能力，正是机器人技术所需要的。婴儿游戏在新技能的习得和认知发展中起着重要作用。注意到早期婴儿花几个小时在游戏中，我们设计了一个婴儿游戏的计算机类比，这个项目是对游戏作为建立对当地世界物理的主观理解的一种手段的深入调查。该项目将在iCub人形机器人上实现一个游戏生成器算法，并在涉及各种物体的广泛场景下进行实验。这包括单独玩物体来学习它们的属性，以及与人类参与者进行互动。我们还包括工具使用的实验（使用一个对象作为作用于另一个对象的工具），以研究对象如何成为自我的延伸。一个选定的婴儿和游戏科学专家小组将在整个项目中提供他们的心理学专业知识，并协助设计一系列匹配实验，将机器人模型的结果与选定的婴儿心理实验的结果进行比较。来自实验的数据将被分析和解释，以阐明一系列科学问题。当我们报告结果时，我们也会提取一些机器人通过游戏学习的一般原则。我们将研究这些原则在新的机器人和智能系统发展中的适用性。例如，我们预计在辅助技术和家庭护理等领域的特殊应用，在这些领域，大规模生产系统的重新编程是不可行的。我们相信，具有发展方法的技术将具有广泛的影响，并通过建立“开发机器人”的应用理念，为“制造机器人”提供另一种选择。

This research project is a psychologically-inspired investigation of an analogy of infant play as the central mechanism for autonomous, self-motivated robots that learn the local physics of their world.We note that infants and children at play exhibit exactly the kind of autonomous learning that would be very desirable in robotics. Infant play has a major role in the acquisition of new skills and cognitive growth. Noticing that early infants spend hours in play, we have designed a computer analogy of infant play and this project is an in-depth investigation into the use of play as a means of building subjective understanding of the physics of the local world.The project will implement a play generator algorithm on an iCub humanoid robot and perform experiments with a wide range of scenarios involving varieties of objects. This includes playing solitarily with objects to learn their properties, and interactive play with a human participant. We also include experiments with tool use (using one object as a tool for acting on another) to investigate how objects may become extensions of self.A panel of selected scientific experts on infants and play will provide their psychological expertise throughout the project and will also assist with the design of a series of matching experiments that will compare results from the robot model with those from selected psychological experiments on infants.The data from the experiments will be analysed and interpreted to shed light on a set of scientific issues. When we report on the results we will also extract some general principles for robot learning through play. We will examine the applicability of these principles in new robotic and intelligent systems developments. For example, we anticipate particular applications in areas such as assistive technology and home care where the re-programming of mass-produced systems is not feasible. We believe technology with a developmental approach will have wide implications and provide an alternative to "building robots" by establishing the idea of "developing robots" for applications.