Legged Odometry from Body Pose in a Hexapod Robot

We report on a continuous time odometry scheme for a walking hexapod robot built upon a previously developed leg-strain based body pose estimator. We implement this estimation procedure and odometry scheme on the robot RHex and evaluate its performance at widely varying speeds and over different ground conditions by means of a 6 degree of freedom vision based ground truth measurement system (GTMS). We also compare the performance to that of sensorless odometry schemes — both legged as well as on a wheeled version of the robot — using GTMS measurements of elapsed distance. For more information: Kod*La

Reflex movements for a virtual human: a biology inspired approach

This paper presents the results of a method to produce autonomous animation of virtual humans. In particular, the proposed methodology is focused on the autonomous synthesis of nonvoluntary gestures such as reflexes and subtle movements which provide a noticeable impression of realism and naturalness. The final goal of this technique is to produce virtual humans with a more spontaneous, non preprogrammed behaviour. For the moment, the technique is applied to the synthesis of reflex movements of the arm, in reaction to thermic stimuli. Nevertheless, a general architecture is outline

From locomotion to cognition: Bridging the gap between reactive and cognitive behavior in a quadruped robot

The cognitivistic paradigm, which states that cognition is a result of computation with symbols that represent the world, has been challenged by many. The opponents have primarily criticized the detachment from direct interaction with the world and pointed to some fundamental problems (for instance the symbol grounding problem). Instead, they emphasized the constitutive role of embodied interaction with the environment. This has motivated the advancement of synthetic methodologies: the phenomenon of interest (cognition) can be studied by building and investigating whole brain-body-environment systems. Our work is centered around a compliant quadruped robot equipped with a multimodal sensory set. In a series of case studies, we investigate the structure of the sensorimotor space that the application of different actions in different environments by the robot brings about. Then, we study how the agent can autonomously abstract the regularities that are induced by the different conditions and use them to improve its behavior. The agent is engaged in path integration, terrain discrimination and gait adaptation, and moving target following tasks. The nature of the tasks forces the robot to leave the ``here-and-now'' time scale of simple reactive stimulus-response behaviors and to learn from its experience, thus creating a ``minimally cognitive'' setting. Solutions to these problems are developed by the agent in a bottom-up fashion. The complete scenarios are then used to illuminate the concepts that are believed to lie at the basis of cognition: sensorimotor contingencies, body schema, and forward internal models. Finally, we discuss how the presented solutions are relevant for applications in robotics, in particular in the area of autonomous model acquisition and adaptation, and, in mobile robots, in dead reckoning and traversability detection