Developmental Robotics - 9780262028011

Developmental robotics is a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to roboticsthat is directly inspired by the developmental principles and mechanisms observed in children'scognitive development. It builds on the idea that the robot, using a set of intrinsic developmentalprinciples regulating the real-time interaction of its body, brain, and environment, canautonomously acquire an increasingly complex set of sensorimotor and mental capabilities. Thisvolume, drawing on insights from psychology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, androbotics, offers the first comprehensive overview of a rapidly growing field.

After providing some essential background information on robotics anddevelopmental psychology, the book looks in detail at how developmental robotics models andexperiments have attempted to realize a range of behavioral and cognitive capabilities. The examplesin these chapters were chosen because of their direct correspondence with specific issues in childpsychology research; each chapter begins with a concise and accessible overview of relevantempirical and theoretical findings in developmental psychology. The chapters cover intrinsicmotivation and curiosity; motor development, examining both manipulation and locomotion; perceptualdevelopment, including face recognition and perception of space; social learning, emphasizing suchphenomena as joint attention and cooperation; language, from phonetic babbling to syntacticprocessing; and abstract knowledge, including models of number learning and reasoning strategies.Boxed text offers technical and methodological details for both psychology and roboticsexperiments.