Research

The overarching approach in my research is the so-called synthetic methodology: understanding natural phenomena by realizing them in artificial systems and, at the same time, seeking how to turn the artifacts into applications (see Hoffmann & Pfeifer 2018 for more details [pdf]).

Body representations in humans and robots

The goal of this research strand is to use humanoid robots, often equipped with whole-body artificial skin arrays to, first, develop embodied computational models of the development and operation of body representations. Please consult the Modeling body representations tab for details.

Collaborative robots and artificial touch

We target two application areas where robots with sensitive skins and multimodal awareness provide a key enabling technology:

(i) safe and intelligent physical man-machine interaction and collaborative robotics (Co-bots and physical HRI tab) 

(ii) automatic self-calibration (Artificial touch and self-calibration tab)

Embodiment and morphological computation

I am also interested in how the body morphology (shape, material properties etc.) can contribute to behavior and cognition in natural and artificial agents. This is typically referred to as embodiment (see e.g., Hoffmann & Pfeifer 2018 [pdf]  and 2011 [pdf]), but sometimes also morphological computation - see the Morphological computation tab. 

Minimally cognitive robotics - from locomotion to cognition

The work that formed the basis for my dissertation (defended in 2012 - pdf) was conducted at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Zurich, under the supervision of Prof. Rolf Pfeifer. The overarching theme was to investigate the emergence of minimally cognitive phenomena in different robots that - equipped with a multimodal set of sensors - learned to extract the regularities from their interaction with the environment, stored them and later deployed them to improve their performance. The key concepts were body schema, forward internal models, and sensorimotor contingencies. The main ideas and implications of this research are summarized in a book chapter ([Springer][preprint]). More details can be found on the From locomotion to cognition subpage.