This paper addresses the role of imitation as a means to enhance the learning of communication skills in autonomous robots. A series of robotic experiments are presented in which autonomous mobile robots are taught a synthetic proto-language. Learning of the language occurs through an imitative scenario where the robot replicates the teacher's movements. Imitation is here an implicit attentional mechanism which allows the robot imitator to share a similar set of proprio- and exteroceptions with the teacher. The robot grounds its understanding of the teacher's words, which describe the teacher's current observations, upon its own perceptions which are similar to those of the teacher. Learning of the robot is based on a dynamical recurrent associative memory architecture (DRAMA). Learning is unsupervised and results from the self-organization of the robot's connectionist architecture. Results show that the imitative behavior greatly improves the efficiency and speed of the learning. More...

This paper presents the role of ethological and emotional models as the basis for an architecture in support of entertainment robotic systems. Specific examples for Sony’s AIBO are presented as well as extensions related to a new humanoid robot, SDR. I.

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