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Adaptive Robotics Humanoid Robotics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
What Is a Humanoid Robot?Humanoid Robotics includes a rich diversity of projects where perception, processing and action are embodied in a recognizably anthropomorphic form in order to emulate some subset of the physical, cognitive and social dimensions of the human body and experience. Humanoid Robotics is not an attempt to recreate humans. The goal is not, nor should it ever be, to make machines that can be mistaken for or used interchangeably with real human beings. Rather, the goal is to create a new kind of tool, fundamentally different from any we have yet seen because it is designed to work with humans as well as for them. Humanoids will interact socially with people in typical, everyday environments. We already have robots to do tedious, repetitive labor for specialized environments and tasks. Instead, humanoids will be designed to act safely alongside humans, extending our capabilities in a wide variety of tasks and environments. At present, Humanoid Robotics is not a well-defined field, but rather an underlying impulse driving collaborative efforts that crosscut many disciplines. Mechanical, electrical and computer engineers, roboticists, computer scientists, artificial intelligence researchers, psychologists, physicists, biologists, cognitive scientists, neurobiologists, philosophers, linguists and artists all contribute and lay claim to the diverse humanoid projects around the world. Inevitably, some projects choose to emphasize the form and mechanical function of the humanoid body. Others may focus on the software to animate these bodies. There are projects that use humanoid robots to model the cognitive or physical aspects of humans. Other projects are more concerned with developing useful applications for commercial use in service or entertainment industries. At times, there are deep ideological and methodological differences. For example, some researchers are most interested in using the human form as a platform for machine learning and online adaptation, while others claim that machine intelligence is not necessary. How can we characterize such a broad range of efforts?
Rather than distinguish humanoids by their physical construction, we choose to identify several complementary research areas that, thus far, have stood out as distinct emphases. Eventually, a fully-fledged humanoid robot will incorporate work from each of the areas below.
This area includes computer vision as well as a great variety of other sensing modalities including taste, smell, sonar, IR, haptic feedback, tactile sensors, and range of motion sensors. It also includes implementation of unconscious physiological mechanisms such as the vestibulo-ocular reflex, which allows humans to track visual areas of interest while moving. Lastly, this area includes the attentional, sensor fusion and perceptual categorization mechanisms which roboticists implement to filter stimulation and coordinate sensing. Human-robot interaction: Learning and adaptive behavior: Legged locomotion: Arm control and dexterous manipulation:
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