Dav developmental humanoid: the control architecture and body

Abstract

Dav is a developmental humanoid built in the Embodied Intelligence Laboratory at Michigan State University. The framework of Dav's control architecture is designed by researchers but the actual controller is developed autonomously (learned without a programmed task-specific representation) from its own experience. Dav's perception driven developmental control architecture is different from a conventional robot controller in following major aspects: (1) No task (goal) is given at programming time, (2) The task-specific representation is generated autonomously from sensor-motor space, not in a 3D world space, (3) The robot learns while performing, and (4) The robot is "alive" while humans interact with it. A developmental robot raises several challenging requirements for its body design that are not the same as those for traditional robots. We outline the major issues in designing the body of such a developmental robot, e.g., mobility, untetheredness, sensor and effector requirements, computational resources, longevity, and body wiring.