ETL-Humanoid: A Research Vehicle for Open-Ended Action Imitation

Abstract

The capability of action imitation constitutes a fundamental basis of higher human intelligence. In this paper, we first analyze the concept of imitation and mark the essential problems underlying imitation, e.g. redundant sensory and motor degrees of freedom, adaptive mapping, and strong embodiment. It supports a synthetic approach to understanding imitation capabilities, which requires a versatile humanoid robot platform. An overview of our full-body humanoid robot system is presented, which is signified by its versatile physical capabilities and complete open architecture. Then we present our early experiment on multi-modal architecture and behavior imitation with the humanoid. It can continuously interact with humans through visual, auditory and motion modalities in an unmodified everyday environment. And when a person attends to the robot, starting to show a dual arm motion, the robot spontaneously starts to copy it.