Neurocognition and ­Action - Biomechanics

Deep Familiarization and Learning in Cooperative Manual Action and Language (FAMULA)

Project: LSP 02
Project duration: 01/2014 - 12/2018
Project funding: 2.082.000 Euro

The Large scale project FAMULA focuses on a robot's autonomous familiarization with novel objects and their affordances through bimanual action, connecting vision, touch and language. Centered around an advanced robot platform combining rich actuation through anthropomorphic hands, touch sensing and vision, the project aims to understand how an agent can acquire familiarity with novel objects as a result of integrating self-generated experiences that combine touch, vision and language. The project consortium comprises teams from computer science/robotics, psychology and cognitive neuroscience which bring together strong expertise in the fields of robotics (sensing, learning and control) and cognitive science (action, learning and language). The Neurocognition and Action Group is responsible for the work package on manual interaction which focuses on the physical, pre-linguistic interaction control between the hands and the focused object(s). In collaboration with the Cognitive Neuroscience Group, we will combine experimental approaches on human subjects with the demonstrator platform to identify and implement the necessary structures for flexible hand-eye control and the necessary interface to the language, learning, and (long-term) memory representations.

For more information, see [ here ] .