Invited talk at the International Expert Days Servicerobotics organized by Schunk : http://www.schunk.com/expertdays_2009/ at Februar 18. The title of the talk is: “Anthropomorphism as a Pervasive Design Concept for a Robotic Assistant “Abstract:The structural characteristics of living organisms are determined by their envi-ronment and the resulting demands on their behavior. Biological systems exhibit characteristics such as autonomy and adaptivity, based on a powerful sensor mechanisms filtering only relevant signals, in order to directly generate motor behavior, to control a metabolism, or to build internal representations of a complex environment. As a consequence, a robotic system, interacting with humans and sharing a com-mon working area, has to adapt to its environment and the tasks it has to perform, just like evolution adapts creatures to their environment and ecological niche. A machine which is supposed to perform both human tasks (such as grasping and assembling of objects) and interacting with humans by means of vision and speech, can do this job best if it possesses anthropomorphic shape, anthropomorphic sensors and a neural architecture. In consequence we identify anthropomorphism as the basic design principle. The described principles were applied to two robotic systems developed at the Institut für Neuroinformatik, both equipped with anthropomorphic shape and a “neuronal architecture”. The first Arnold is able to visually explore an unknown environment, to navigate in this environment and to use its 7DOF arm to grasp and transport objects. The system can be guided by gestures and a limited set of spoken commands. The second system Cora is stationary and meant to cooperate with a human at a production line in an interactive assembly process.
