Social referencing is the tendency to use the emotional reaction of another to help form one's own affective appraisal of a novel situation, which is then used to guide subsequent behavior. It is an important form of emotional communication and is a developmental milestone for human infants in their ability to learn about their environment through social means. In this paper, we present a biolo...

It is expected that forthcoming humanoid robots will execute various complicated tasks via communication with a human user. The humanoid robots will be equipped with anthropomorphic multi-fingered hands very like the human hand. We call this a humanoid hand robot. Humanoid hand robots will eventually supplant human labor in the execution of intricate and dangerous tasks in areas such as manufac...

Predictive Robot Control with Neural Networks G. Schram , F.X. van der Linden, B.J.A. Kr ose, F.C.A. Groen Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Amsterdam Kruislaan 403, NL-1098 SJ [email protected] Abstract. For a target tracking task, the hand-held camera of the anthropomorphic OSCAR-robot manipulator has to track an object which moves arbitrarily on a table. Th...

Movement generation in robotics is a well know problem with many excellent solutions. Most of them, however, look for optimal solutions according to some metrics, but have no biological inspiration. From a human perspective these techniques behave in a non-naturalistic way. This poses a problem for human-robot interaction and, in general, for a good acceptance of robots in society. The present ...

The NASA/DARPA Robonaut system is evolving from a purely teleoperator controlled anthropomorphic robot towards a humanoid system with multiple control pathways. Robonaut is a human scale robot designed to approach the dexterity of a space suited astronaut. Under teleoperator control, Robonaut has been able to perform many high payoff tasks indicating that it could significantly reduce the maint...

Gesture-changeable under-actuated (GCUA) function is presented to make robot hand grasp objects dexterously and achieve humanoid manipulations with low dependence on control system. Based on GUCA function, GCUA Hand II is developed, which has 5 fingers and 14 DOFs. All the fingers use similar tendon mechanisms to achieve GCUA function which includes traditional under-actuated (UA) grasping moti...

We describe a new Compliant Articulated Robot Leg, CARL, which we constructed as a prototype for an autonomous robot quadruped. The leg is designed for dynamic walking, trotting and bounding gaits, with an expected top speed of 3m=s. It is an anthropomorphic (articulated) 3 DOF design with revolute joints as opposed to prismatic joints for improved mobility, simplicity and low friction. It empl...

What we appreciate in dance is the ability of people to spontaneously improvise new movements and choreographies, surrendering to the music rhythm, being inspired by the current perceptions and sensations and by previous experiences, deeply stored in their memory. Like other human abilities, this, of course, is challenging to reproduce in an artificial entity such as a robot. Recent generations...