Experimental results in psychology have shown the important role of manipulation in guiding infant development. This has inspired work in developmental robotics as well. In this case, however, the benefits of this approach has been limited by the intrinsic difficulties of the task. Controlling the interaction between the robot and the environment in a meaningful and safe way is hard especially when little prior knowledge is available. We push the idea that haptic feedback can enhance the way robots interact with unmodeled environments. We approach grasping and manipulation as tasks driven mainly by tactile and force feedback. We implemented a grasping behavior on a robotic platform with sensitive tactile sensors and compliant actuators; the behavior allows the robot to grasp objects placed on a table. Finally, we demonstrate that the haptic feedback originated by the interaction with the objects carries implicit information about their shape and can be useful for learning.

Humans use a set of exploratory procedures to examine object properties through grasping and touch. Our goal is to exploit similar methods with a humanoid robot to enable developmental learning about manipulation. We use a compliant robot hand to find objects without prior knowledge of their presence or location, and then tap those objects with a finger. This behavior lets the robot generate and collect samples of the contact sound produced by impact with that object. We demonstrate the feasibility of recognizing objects by their sound, and relate this to human performance under situations analogous to that of the robot. 1.

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