Motor Development of Musculoskeletal Infant Robot

Abstract

Our goal is to clarify the role of embodiment in the early stage of the development through experiments with the musculoskeletal infant robot we have built up. This paper describes the way for the infant robot to acquire crawling locomotion utilizing central pattern generator and online optimization algorithm referred to as Powell's method. A coordinated motion of the musculoskeletal infant robot is successfully learned so that it can go forward after the optimization.