Study of Morphological Development as a Tool for Learning Robotic Controllers

Abstract

[Abstract] Humans and animals undergo morphological development from infancy
\nto adulthood, which takes place in parallel with cognitive development. In fact,
\nthis process has been shown to facilitate learning in humans. However, most
\nof the works on developmental robotics consider fixed morphologies, addressing
\nonly the development of the cognitive system of the robots and ignoring
\nthe interaction between cognitive development and morphological development.
\nMoreover, the few cases found in the literature where cognitive and
\nmorphological development are jointly addressed in robotic systems present
\nrather heterogeneous and inconclusive results regarding the causes and the
\nmechanisms that explain the influence of morphological development on
\nlearning.
\nThis work addresses the problem of identifying those features of morphological
\ndevelopment that influence learning, as well as how and why this influence
\ncomes about. To this end, a simple and controlled experimental framework
\nbased on legged robot morphologies has been designed and an extensive
\nseries of experiments have been run in order to try to answer these questions.
\nThe conclusions obtained from this experimental work have been validated
\nthrough the successful implementation on a bipedal robot of a morphological
\ndevelopment strategy designed using the insights obtained. This has allowed
\nus to posit an initial set of design principles that should be applied in order to
\nproduce successful morphological development processes for particular problems.