Development of neural mechanisms for machine learning

Abstract

The goal of this work is to develop a humanoid robot's perceptual mechanisms through the use of learning aids. We describe methods to enable learning on a humanoid robot using learning aids such as books, drawing materials, boards, educational videos or other children toys. Visual properties of objects are learned and inserted into a recognition scheme, which is then applied to acquire new object representations - we propose learning through developmental stages. Inspired in infant development, we will also boost the robot's perceptual capabilities by having a human caregiver performing educational and play activities with the robot (such as drawing, painting or playing with a toy train on a railway). We describe original algorithms to extract meaningful percepts from such learning experiments. Experimental evaluation of the algorithms corroborates the theoretical framework.