Embodied Intelligence Projects Joint Collaboration Website

New technologies and design approaches for building physically embodied intelligent agents and artefacts

Mission

 

The Embodied Intelligence

"The nature of the human mind is largely determined by the form of the human body."
"Artificial intelligence can only be achieved by machines that have sensory and motor skills and are connected to the world through a body."

Rodney A. Brooks, Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999
Rolf Pfeifer and J. C. Bongard, How the body shapes the way we think: a new view of intelligence, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007

 The "Embodied Intelligence" projects attend to explore new forms of sensing and interacting, employing new design approaches and ICT with the address to the relationship between shape, function and the physical and social environment for the development of new intelligent physical artefacts. The projects stress the role of interaction of agents with the environment for adaptation process and open-ended learning (changes in morphology, shape, cognition, perception, cooperation), study new design principles for new robot architectures based on the deeper understanding of the role of form and material properties in shaping behaviour or develop smart components and techniques for purposive agents where behaviour is not strictly program but robustly emerges from the interaction of the various components, or with the environment.

FET Proactive Initiative for the Embodied Intelligence Projects Target outcome:

The research objectives of the "Embodied Intelligence" initiative address new technologies and design approaches for building physically embodied intelligent agents and artefacts, with emphasis on the relationship between shape, function and the physical and social environment, and addressing one or several of the following:

  • Mind-body co-development and co-evolution: through permanent and extended multimodal interaction of agents with the physical and social environment. Projects will develop a better understanding of the role of such interaction in open-ended learning and adaptation processes, including morphological change for shaping perception, cognition, cooperation and social intelligence. They will demonstrate qualitative and quantitative improvements in agent capabilities and characteristics.
  • Morphology and behaviour: new design principles for sensing, actuation and locomotion components and for robot architectures that are based on a deeper understanding of the role of form and material properties in shaping behaviour, and of the ways in which these afford relationships and interactions with the environment and with other agents. Projects will aim to demonstrate advantages in physical and performance characteristics of the robot e.g. in terms of control, weight, flexibility, resilience, or other characteristics.
  • Design for emergence: design paradigms and techniques for purposive agents where behaviour is not strictly programmed but robustly emerges from the interaction of the various components (each with local intelligence), the environment and its ubiquitous information resources. Projects will develop smart components and techniques for the design of ambitious classes of scalable robotic systems, incorporating where possible prior knowledge on tasks or environments, while leaving the necessary room for emergence and adaptation.
The Coordination Actions should establish a continuous communication and cooperation system within and beyond Europe to support the consolidation of research communities, their visibility, the coordination of research agendas and, where appropriate, the coordination of national or regional research programmes or activities. The initiative also encourages international cooperation in foundational research on topics described above.

FET Proactive EMBODYi Projects Collaboration

The Collaboration activities include joint collaborative tasks among all FET-Proactive EMBODYi Projects such as: Joint Publications and Joint Events (more...)

 

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