Towards a “Brain-Guided” Cognitive Architecture - Bioinspired Approaches for Human-Centric Technologies - page 218

Fig. 7.4 Schematic illustration of the recent developments in the fields of neuroscience that we
plan to integrate in the cognitive architecture for iCub
multiple streams of information that aid the learning process itself. Most important
among them are social interaction (e.g., imitating a teacher's demonstration),
physical interaction (or practice), and “recycling” previously acquired motor
knowledge (experience). On the other hand, from the neuroscience perspective,
there has been resounding evidence substantiating the fact that action “generation
and observation” share underlying functional networks in the brain, and experi-
ments related to “tool use” learning in animals clearly indicate the fact that the a
learned “tool” during coordination becomes a part of the acting “body schema” and
is coded in the motor system as if it were an artificial hand able to interact with the
external objects, exactly as the natural hand is able to do.
For the development of a “motor vocabulary” and a “procedural memory” for
iCub, we took into account the following main requirements:
1. The need to learn “fast” and “green,” by combining multiple learning streams
(social interaction, exploration, recycling of past motor experience);
2. The need to arrive at a shared computational basis for “execution, perception,
imagination, and understanding” of action;
3. The need to arrive at general representational framework for motor action
generation and skill learning that firstly blurs the distinction between body and