A Baby Robot Platform for Cognitive Developmental Robotics

This paper presents a new baby robot platform for cognitive developmental robotics developed by the SociallySynergistic Intelligence group of JST ERATO Asada Project. We aim at developing a baby-sized humanoid robot with highperformance mobility to tackle research issues which have not been covered by robots developed in our group, for example, motor learning through whole-body motor babbling and motion generation with tactile interaction. For this purpose, powerful and easily controllable actuators as well as a robust structure able to absorb shocks are chosen to allow the development of dynamical motions. Furthermore the robot surface is covered by touch sensors in order to allow studies in physical humanrobot interaction. Two research topics that will employ the new platform are presented. The former involves the exploitation of biological fluctuations, a control method inspired from the chemotaxis of bacteria and from gene expressions of growing cells, to learn a crawling motion. The second aims at studying touch as a communication mean to develop robot motions.