Tekkotsu

Cognitive Robotics

We are working on extending Tekkotsu to support higher level abstractions for robot programming.  We call our approach "cognitive robotics" because it draws inspiration from ideas in cognitive science, such as Ullman's notion of "visual routines", Paivio's "dual coding theory", and Gibson's concept of "affordances". Cognitive robotics makes no strong theoretical claims, but instead focuses on developing technology that actually works, on real robots, with their inherent physical constraints and sensory limitations.

Tekkotsu's high level primitives form the basis of a new Cognitive Robotics course offered at Carnegie Mellon in January 2006, and soon at other schools as well.

Our initial efforts are described in some brief abstracts:

• Teaching Cognitive Robotics with Tekkotsu (2007, local:PDF)
  David S. Touretzky, Ethan J. Tira-Thompson, and Andrew B. Williams
  Workshop given at SIGCSE (38th Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education), March 7, 2007, Covington Kentucky
• Tekkotsu: A framework for AIBO cognitive robotics (2005, local: PDF)
  David S. Touretzky and Ethan J. Tira-Thompson
  Proceedings of the Twentieth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-05). Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press.
• Tekkotsu: Cognitive Robotics on the Sony AIBO (2004, local: PDF)
  Ethan J. Tira-Thompson, Neil S. Halelamien, Jordan J. Wales, and David S. Touretzky
  Abstract for poster at International Conference on Cognitive Modelling, July 31, 2004, Pittsburgh, PA
• Cognitive Primitives for Mobile Robots (2004, local: PDF)
  Ethan J. Tira-Thompson, Neil S. Halelamien, Jordan J. Wales, and David S. Touretzky
  Abstract for presentation at AAAI Fall Symposium 2004 "The Intersection of Cognitive Science and Robotics: From Interfaces to Intelligence", October 23, 2004 at Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Washington D.C.
• Robot Playpen Construction Guide - a good development environment can protect your hardware investment and simplify some perceptual issues.

More detail is given in Neil Halelamien's senior honors thesis at Carnegie Mellon. Emre Ugur at Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey) has compiled a very good review of the literature on use of "affordances" in cognitive robotics.