A developmental approach to mobile robotic reaching

Abstract

This paper presents a developmental approach to create a mobile robot’s reaching ability. The approach consists of two stages. In the first stage, the mobile robot cannot move, so that the robot develops the reaching ability in the static environment. In the second stage, the robot learns to control its moving ability. By combining the two abilities, the robot successfully obtains the ability to reach objects that are far away from the robot. The two abilities are implemented by two artificial neural networks. A developmental constraint driven mechanism is applied to the robot system, so that, the robot adapts to the environment and completes the tasks in dynamic environment step by step. The experiments and simulations demonstrate that the robotic system, by imitating the process of the human development, gradually and autonomously obtains the reaching ability.