Approaching Manual Intelligence

Abstract

Grasping and manual interaction for robots so far has largely been approached with an emphasis on physics and control aspects. Given the richness of human manual interaction, we argue for the consideration of the wider field of "manual intelligence" as a perspective for manual action research that brings the cognitive nature of human manual skills to the foreground. We briefly sketch part of a research agenda along these lines, argue for the creation of a manual interaction database as an important cornerstone of such an agenda, and describe the manual interaction lab recently set up at CITEC to realize this goal and to connect the efforts of robotics and cognitive science researchers towards making progress for a more integrated understanding of manual intelligence. From Robots to Manual IntelligenceProgress in mechatronics, sensing and control has made sophisticated robot hands possible whose potential for dexterous operation is at least beginning to approach the superb performance of human hands [1][2][3]. The increasing availability of these hands, together with sophisticated, physicsbased simulation software, has spurred a revival of the field of anthropomorphic hand control in robotics, whose ultimate goal is to replicate the abilities of human hands to handle everyday objects in flexible ways and in unprepared environments.The authors are cooperating within the Bielefeld Excellence Cluster Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) and the Bielefeld Institute for Cognition and Robotics (CoR-Lab).

Representation and learning in motor action – Bridges between experimental research and cognitive robotics

“…Researchers from different fields, such as cognitive psychology, cognitive robotics and sport psychology (Maycock et al, 2010;Schack, 2004aSchack, , 2004bSchack & Mechsner, 2006;Schack & Ritter, 2009;Tenenbaum et al, 2009), have provided evidence for so-called basic action concepts (BACs) in the control of human movements. Analogous to the well-established notion of basic concepts for objects (Rosch, 1978), BACs are meant to be the mental counterparts of functionally relevant elementary components or transitional states (body postures) of complex movements.…”

“…How such BACs are integrated into higher-order representation structures has been investigated and simulated with different methods (see Krause, Dürr, Bläsing, & Schack, 2010;Maycock et al, 2010;Schack, 2004a). Based on an experimental approach Schack and Mechsner (2006) studied the tennis serve to investigate the nature and role of long-term memory in skilled athletic performance.…”

“…To strengthen links between experimental research and robotics, we have studied cognitive representations not in isolation but as parts of a cognitive action architecture (Maycock et al, 2010;Schack & Ritter, 2009). Such a perspective has consequences for the design of experimental studies and other lines of research.…”

“…Different lines of development in cognitive robotics (Maycock et al, 2010) have exposed interesting parallels to a cognitively motivated architecture for human motor action (Schack, 2004a(Schack, , 2004bSchack & Ritter, 2009). This architecture addresses cognitive representations as a part of an action system, postulating four levels: a sensorimotor level providing an interface to sensors and effectors, two intermediate levels of sensorimotor and mental representations, accommodating basic action units at different levels of abstraction, and a topmost level of mental control shaping our purposeful behavior (see Fig.…”

“…This enables us to explore correspondences between the computational manual action architecture on the one side, and the sensorimotor and mental representations levels of the cognitive model on the other (see Fig. 6), and to bring to bear methods from both disciplines to mutually refine and cross-connect the two accounts, with the aim of producing a coherent and overarching picture of complex action and especially of manual intelligence (see Maycock et al, 2010).…”