A Roadmap for Cognitive Development in Humanoid Robots

by David Vernon, Claes von Hofsten, Luciano Fadiga

2011 · Springer Science & Business Media

This book addresses the central role played by development in cognition. The focus is on applying our knowledge of development in natural cognitive systems, specifically human infants, to the problem of creating artificial cognitive systems in the guise of humanoid robots. The approach is founded on the three-fold premise that (a) cognition is the process by which an autonomous self-governing agent acts effectively in the world in which it is embedded, (b) the dual purpose of cognition is to increase the agent's repertoire of effective actions and its power to anticipate the need for future actions and their outcomes, and (c) development plays an essential role in the realization of these cognitive capabilities. Our goal in this book is to identify the key design principles for cognitive development. We do this by bringing together insights from four areas: enactive cognitive science, developmental psychology, neurophysiology, and computational modelling. This results in roadmap comprising a set of forty-three guidelines for the design of a cognitive architecture and its deployment in a humanoid robot. The book includes a case study based on the iCub, an open-systems humanoid robot which has been designed specifically as a common platform for research on embodied cognitive systems .

Thermodynamics of Fluids Under Flow

by David Jou, José Casas-Vázquez, Manuel Criado-Sancho

2001 · Springer Science & Business Media

The book analyzes the thermodynamic aspects of several phenomena induced by flow in fluid systems. It begins with a macroscopic formulation of the thermodynamic theory, within the framework of extended irreversible thermodynamics, and compares it with other non-equilibrium approaches. These macroscopic results are examined from a microscopic point of view for different systems, namely, ideal gases, non-ideal gases and dilute polymer solutions. The thermodynamic approach is applied to the analysis of shear-induced changes in the phase diagram of polymer solutions, to shear-induced diffusion and to chemical reactions under flow. It is also compared with the dynamical approach based on the detailed evolution equations. The book may be especially useful for researchers in non-equilibrium thermodynamics or non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and in polymer physics or materials sciences.