Embodiment and Humanoid Robotics

The concept of embodimentSacheintragembodiment (i.e. of a bodily basis) of human cognitionSacheintragcognition has a long history in philosophy and nowadays develops a growing impact on humanoid roboticsSacheintraghumanoid robotics. There, inspirations often aim at mimicking human skills and achieving friendly and fruitful human-robot interactionSacheintraghuman-robot interaction (HRI). This article considers as an example the embedding of the sense of self-agencySacheintragsense of self-agency (SSA) in very basic human sensorimotor controlSacheintragsensorimotor control mechanisms and, after its modeling, its ‘re-embodiment’ into human-inspired robots. From this it is concluded that (1) robotics profits with respect to robot safety, control robustness, versatility, energy costs, and HRI from implementing human sensorimotor control concepts, and (2) vice versa, concepts of human cognitive and physiological functions may profit when confronted with ‘real world’ tests in robots.