Italy – A shot in the arm for researchers of biological intelligence in the form of a baby robot, that is designed to closely resemble a baby infant’s learning process, aided by it’s interaction with the world. Babybot, the brain child of roboticists from Italy, France and Switzerland, is an ingenious effort of mimicking a human infant’s ability to learn, in a similar manner of experimenting with objects available, and imbibing the information from the environment.
The robot is designed to appear with a single-armed torso, a pair of cameras that support the function of eyes, and a hand that is provided for grasping objects. The novelty in this design is the ability to be curious enough to explore and nurture the desire of physically experimenting with different objects on the table. It is also endowed with a perception level that allows it to distinguish and learn from mistakes, akin to how a baby infant develops skills in the growing process.Giorgio Metta at Genoa University in Italy, a member of the research team, says, "Babybot is based on artificial neural networks, which are not in the slightest the same as biological ones. Since we only have one example of intelligence in the universe, the brain, it might help to keep closer to biology. For all we know it might be the only way of doing it."
