What can a 3 1/2 year old child robot teach us about human cognition? A significant amount, according to a group of researchers in Italy and the U.K. The humanoid robot named iCub has recently been acquired by Imperial College of London, from its birthplace in Italy. The robot will spend the next several years in London while researchers probe the question of how humans use cognition (the process of knowing that includes awareness, perception, reasoning and judgement) to interact with their surroundings. iCub stands 32 inches tall, weighs approximately 70 lbs, and is anthropomorphic in design—with a head, neck, torso, legs, arms and fingers. Researchers in the College’s Departments of Computing and Electrical and Electronic Engineering believe iCub’s human-like body will help them to understand how this interaction is accomplished.
The project at Imperial College will be overseen by Professor Murray Shanahan, of the Department of Computing. According to Dr. Shanahan, “Nature developed cognition for us in order to make us better at interacting with the physical and social world,” he explains. “If we want to understand the nature of cognition better then we really need to understand it in the context of something that moves or interacts with objects. That is where iCub can help us.”
As reported in a news article in physorg.com, “The team will test their theories about cognition by creating a computer simulation of a brain, which will replicate how neurons in real brains communicate through short bursts of electrical energy. In people, this process helps us to interact with the physical world. For instance, the electrical signals sent by neurons control muscles that enable people to lift a cup to the mouth to sip on a drink.” The research team at Imperial College plans to connect a computer simulation of a human brain to the iCub robot and then send bursts of electrical energy to its motors to allow it to move its arms, head, eyes and fingers to carry out very simple tasks such as lifting a ball and moving it from one place to another. Here’s a video of iCub playing drums:
Video: iCub robot playing drums
The experimentations with the iCub robot should also lead to significant new breakthroughs in child development, and may set a new paradigm for using humanoids to studying the biological and psychological aspects of human growth and learning. Indeed, if the researchers at Imperial College are successful, they will have made an important step in reproducing the way that humans use cognition to interact in their world. Professor Shanahan says: “I’m really interested in the fundamental scientific questions about ourselves and about the nature of our own brains and how they allow us to do the kinds of things that we do each day. If we can test our theories about cognition by building and experimenting with robots, then we may just be one step closer to really beginning to understand what makes us tick.”
Researchers expect to get the first results from their experiments with iCub in the next three to five years.
The iCub project is a product of collaboration between several European universities, led by the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa. The project originated in 2003 as a 5 year plan, funded by the European Commission, to develop a functioning humanoid child. According to www.robotcub.org:
“Our main goal is to study cognition through the implementation of a humanoid robot the size of a 3.5 year old child: the iCub. This is an open project in many different ways: we distribute the platform openly, we develop software open-source, and we are open to including new partners and form collaboration worldwide.”
The distinctive feature surrounding the development of the iCub robot project is that it has been entirely open-domain. The RobotCub website offers up-to-date documentation of the iCub project, including all deliverables, source files, community feedback and additional support, as well as PDFs of the robot’s specifications, i.e. Hardware, Middleware, and Software. Several educational forums have been offered over the last several years through the iCub consortium, including RobotCub sponsored Summer Sessions at University of Genoa, as well as a full-fledged Interdisciplinary PhD School on Humanoid Technologies through Genoa—including the availability of fellowships.
In this context, the background behind the acquisition of iCub by Imperial College becomes more apparent. According to its website, RobotCub launched an Open Call for proposals in 2006 to derive ways to operationalize the newly developed iCub robots. The agreement of the research agenda is that six robots will eventually be given free of charge to research institutions or small consortia worldwide. The consortium appears to have followed its schedule rigorously and has carefully kept their site updated. Indeed, the first robots are already being delivered. The Open Call invited proposals for projects which focus on using the humanoid robot iCub for embodied artificial cognitive systems research. An iCub kit was awarded to each of the applicants who submitted the six best proposals, with the first prize going to Murray Shanahan and Yiannis Demiris at Imperial College.
The iCub project demonstrates a considerably important stage in the development of humanoid robots. A point discussed in “Robotic Neurosurgery – Hacking Your Brain with The NeuroArm”, deserves repeating here: the development of advanced humanoid robotics in the coming decades will benefit primarily from the leveraging of numerous open-domain, multidisciplinary research and development efforts across a wide range of industries and applications. Because of the immense technological challenges involved in reverse engineering of the human body, humanoid technologies will invariably progress on many fronts—from the micro to macro-levels of increasing sophistication and application—thus, enabling engineers and scientists to achieve efficient collaborative approaches to developing full-scale anthropomorphic architectures. The iCub project is extremely innovative and groundbreaking, not only because of the nature of its exploration of human cognition and artificial intelligence, but also because of the project’s well-organized and strategic platform: iCub teaches future roboticists the importance of achieving a novel, progressive, and open-domain approach to cross-cultural research and development, design, knowledge sharing, accountability measures, and implementation structures. The ongoing research using iCub robots within various research institutes around the world will continue to advance the state of humanoid robotics knowledge considerably, as robotics engineers, medical doctors, child psychologists, neuroscientists, and other highly trained professionals collaborate together to build the next generation of robots.
There has never been a better, more exciting time than now to get involved in humanoid robotics research and to position oneself as a useful contributor in this arena. To make meaning in the world and to bring greater fulfillment to the lives of individuals and institutions are the most powerful inducements for developing robotics technologies. Considering the technological convergences and socio-cultural, political, and economic transformations that the robotics revolution will engender, how will you respond and what role do you intend to play in this new global civil society? Skeptical? Not convinced? The iCub robot is notable proof that this era is already upon us, even as we speak.
Tags: future of robotics, human cognition, human robot interaction, humanoid robots, iCub, RobotCub
