Using human tools can significantly benefit robots in many application domains. Such ability
would allow robots to solve problems that they were unable to without tools. However, robot …

JJ Gibson's concept of affordance, one of the central pillars of ecological psychology, is a
truly remarkable idea that provides a concise theory of animal perception predicated on …

The concept of affordances appeared in psychology during the late 60s as an alternative
perspective on the visual perception of the environment. It was revolutionary in the intuition …

Within the realm of service robotics, researchers have placed a great amount of effort into
learning, understanding, and representing motions as manipulations for task execution by …

Machine learning techniques have enabled robots to learn narrow, yet complex tasks and
also perform broad, yet simple skills with a wide variety of objects. However, learning a …

Affordances capture the relationships between a robot and the environment in terms of the
actions that the robot is able to perform. The notable characteristic of affordance-based …

This article studies algorithms used by a learner to explore high-dimensional structured
sensorimotor spaces such as in tool use discovery. In particular, we consider goal babbling …

This paper investigates a biologically motivated model of peripersonal space through its
implementation on a humanoid robot. Guided by the present understanding of the …

The ability to learn about and efficiently use tools constitutes a desirable property for general
purpose humanoid robots, as it allows them to extend their capabilities beyond the …

The use of hand tools presents a challenge for robot manipulation in part because it calls for
motions requiring continuous force application over a whole trajectory, usually involving …