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Thursday, 2011-01-27
 
Department of Robotic Systems

Invited Talk: Humanoid Manipulation and Natural Interaction in Human-Centered Environments

 


Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rüdiger Dillmann

Institute of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE)

Industrial Applications of Computer Science and Micro Systems (IAIM)

Universität Karlsruhe (TH)

Kaiserstr. 12, D-76128, Karlsruhe, Germany


Abstract


Humanoid robotics is a new, challenging field of robotics and a good candidate to address the fundamental questions associated with personal and home robots. They also provide rich sensorimotor capabilities for studying the emergence of cognitive capabilities in artificial systems. Beyond a physical resemblance, humanoid robots must resemble humans in their ways of acting in the world, of reasoning about the world and of communicating about the world. Most importantly, humanoid robots, like humans, should be provided with learning and adaptive capabilities to face a less predictable world. Further, they should be able to interpret the actions of humans, in order both to react adequately to the humans’ request and needs, as well as to learn from observing humans actions.

In order for humanoid robots to enter human-centered environments, it is indispensable to equip them with manipulative, perceptive and communicative skills necessary for real-time interaction with the environment and humans. The Collaborative Research Center 588 "Humanoid Robots - Learning and Cooperating Multimodal Robots" was established by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: DFG) in July 2001 and will run until 2012. Goal of this project is to develop principles and methods to build artificial robotic systems that can coexist with people, interact with people and help them. In particular, we address the integration of motor, perception and cognition components such as programming by demonstration, learning and exploration, multimodal human-humanoid interaction and human-humanoid cooperation in order to be able to demonstrate manipulation and grasping tasks in a kitchen environment as a prototypical human-centered one.

In this talk, we present the humanoid robots currently developed within the SFB 588 for applications in human-centered environments. Apart from the mechatronics and motor control of the robots, the sensorimotor behaviours as well as the integration of perception, action, learning and interaction components toward the realization of fully integrated humanoid robots performing grasping and manipulation tasks in a household scenario will be presented.


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