Some Experiments on the influence of Problem Hardness in Morphological Development based Learning of Neural Controllers

Natural beings undergo a morphological development process of their bodies while they are learning and adapting to the environments they face from infancy to adulthood. In fact, this is the period where the most important learning pro-cesses, those that will support learning as adults, will take place. However, in artificial systems, this interaction between morphological development and learning, and its possible advantages, have seldom been considered. In this line, this paper seeks to provide some insights into how morphological development can be harnessed in order to facilitate learning in em-bodied systems facing tasks or domains that are hard to learn. In particular, here we will concentrate on whether morphological development can really provide any advantage when learning complex tasks and whether its relevance towards learning in-creases as tasks become harder. To this end, we present the results of some initial experiments on the application of morpho-logical development to learning to walk in three cases, that of a quadruped, a hexapod and that of an octopod. These results seem to confirm that as task learning difficulty increases the application of morphological development to learning becomes more advantageous.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

A brief review of robotics technologies to support social interventions for older users

In the last few decades, various studies demonstrated numerous robotics applications that can tackle the problem of the ageing population by supporting older people to live longer and independently at home. This article reviews the scientific literature and highlights how social robots can help the daily life of older people and be useful also as assessment tools for mild physical and mental conditions. It will underline the aspects of usability and acceptability of robotic solutions for older persons. Indeed, the design should maximise these to improve the users' attitude towards the actual use of the robots. The article discusses the advantages and concerns about the use of robotics technology in the social context with a vulnerable population. In this field, success is to assist social workers, not to replace them. We conclude recommending that care benefits should be balanced against ethical costs