28. Embodied Mental Imagery in Cognitive Robots

This chapter is focused on discussing the concept of mental imagery as a fundamental cognitive capability to enhance the performance of cognitive robots. Indeed, the emphasis will be on the embodied imagery mechanisms applied to build artificial cognitive models of motor imagery and mental simulation to control complex behaviors of humanoid platforms, which represent the artificial body. With the aim of providing a panorama of the research activity on the topic, first we give an introduction on the neuroscientific and psychological background of mental imagery in order to help the reader to contextualize the multidisciplinary environment in which we operate. Then, we review the work done in the field of artificial cognitive systems and robotics to mimic the process behind the human ability of creating mental images of events and experiences, and to use this process as a cognitive mechanism to improve the behavior of complex robots. Finally, we report the detail of three recent empirical studies in which mental imagery approaches were modelled trough artificial neural networks (ANNs) to enable a cognitive robot with some human-like capabilities. 28.1 Mental Imagery Research Background 620