A developmental approach to grasping

In this paper we describe a developmental path which allows a humanoid robot to initiate interaction with the environment by grasping objects. Development begins with the exploration of the robot’s own body (control of the head and arm, identification of the hand) and moves afterward to the external world (reaching and grasping). A final experiment is reported to illustrate how these simple behaviors can be integrated to start autonomous exploration of the environment. In fact we believe that for an active system the capacity to act is not a mere arrival point but it is rather required in order for the system to further develop by acquiring and structuring information about its environment.