Developmental robotics

Developmental Robotics (DevRob), sometimes called epigenetic robotics, is a methodology that uses metaphors from developmental psychology to develop controllers for autonomous robots. The focus is on a single robot going through stages of autonomous mental development. Researchers in this field study artificial emotions, self-motivation, and other methods of self-organization.

DevRob is related to, but differs from, evolutionary robotics (ER). ER uses populations of robots that evolve over time, whereas DevRob is interested in the organization of a single robot's control system develops through experience, over time.

DevRob is also related to work done in the domains of Robotics, Artificial Life.

History
DevRob was first proposed with Weng et. al.s ''Autonomous mental development by robots and animals. Science 291:599 600.''

The first undergraduate courses in DevRob were offered at Bryn Mawr College and Swarthmore College in the Spring of 2003 by Douglas Blank and Lisa Meeden, respectively.

The first graduate course in DevRob was offered at Iowa State University by Alexander Stoytchev in the Fall of 2005.

Academic institutions and researchers in the field

 * Michigan State University -- Embodied Intelligence Lab: http://www.cse.msu.edu/ei
 * Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris: http://www.csl.sony.fr/Research/Topics/DevelopmentalRobotics/
 * University of Tokyo -- Intelligent Systems and Informatics Lab: http://www.isi.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/
 * LIRA-Lab, University of Genova, Italy: http://www.liralab.it
 * The University of Texas at Austin, UTCS Intelligent Robotics Lab: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/qr/robotics/bootstrap-learning.html
 * RobotCub Project: A 5 years European founded project to study cognition with a robot like a two years old child
 * Bryn Mawr College's Developmental Robotics Project: research projects by faculty and students at Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr Colleges, Philadelphia, PA, USA
 * Jean Project: Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California

Main Conferences

 * International Conference on Development and Learning ICDL: http://icdl.cc/
 * Epigentic Robotics: http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org/
 * Developmental Robotics: http://cs.brynmawr.edu/DevRob05/

Blogs and Other Links

 * Developing Intelligence: http://develintel.blogspot.com
 * Developmental Robotics: http://developmentalrobotics.org : general information about developmental robotics