Скачать или смотреть The robot homunculus: learning of artificial skin representation inspired by the brain

Leveraging on the artificial skin of the iCub humanoid, researchers at the iCub Facility of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, together with the Czech Technical University in Prague and Comenius University in Bratislava, studied how can the robot develop a representation of his body surface only from being touched by other people. Human and monkey brains contain distorted body maps of the body - the so-called "homunculi", or "little men". A new algorithm was used that allowed the iCub to develop the "robot homunculus" for its brain -- a map of its skin surface similar to the one in biological brains. In this way, the engineers do not need to calibrate and program the skin model anymore and the iCub can use the homunuculus he learned autonomously.
Furthermore, the algorithm can cope with changes to the body: when one body part stops functioning, the robot "brain" reallocates this territory to other body parts. With the artificial skin as a key enabling technology, the representation developed here is being integrated into new control algorithms that improve the safety of human-robot interaction and pave the way for robots leaving the factories and entering our homes.

Full details can be found in: Hoffmann, M.; Straka, Z.; Farkas, I.; Vavrecka, M. & Metta, G. (2017), 'Robotic homunculus: Learning of artificial skin representation in a humanoid robot motivated by primary somatosensory cortex', IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCDS.2017.264...