Staged development of Robot Motor Coordination

M.H. Lee and Q. Meng, 'Staged development of Robot Motor Coordination', IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, (IEEE SMC 05), Hawaii, USA, v3, 2917-2922, 2005.

We describe an approach to sensory-motor learning and coordination that draws from psychology rather than neuroscience. The growth of the motor coordination is controlled through sequential lifting of constraints, which is inspired by Jean Piaget's developmental learning theory. Our objective is the implementation of a flexible learning framework for an embodied hand/eye system which exhibits a prolonged epigenetic developmental process. The results show how staged competence can be shaped by qualitative behavior changes produced by anatomical, computational and maturational constraints.