Abstract
The basis of human motor skills and cognitive abilities is acquired during its infancy. The mechanism of the development, however, is as yet a big mystery. We have developed a musculoskeletal infant robot driven by pneumatic actuators in order to clarify the role of embodiment, especially of the musculoskeletal and skin system, in the early stage of the development through experiments in the real world. In this paper, we describe a design concept of the infant robot driven by pneumatic artificial muscles and its flexible skin sytem. This robot can be useful platform for many researches associated with cognitive developmental robotics.
