CB2: A child robot with biomimetic body for cognitive developmental robotics

This paper presents a new research platform, CB 2 , a child robot with biomimetic body for cognitive developmental robotics 1 developed by the Socially-Synergistic Intelligence (Hereafter, Socio-SI) group of JST ERATO Asada Project. The Socio-SI group has focused on the design principles of communicative and intelligent machines and human social development through building a humanoid robot that has physical and perceptual structures close to us, that enables safe and close interactions with humans. For this purpose, CB 2 was designed, especially in order to establish and maintain a long-term social interaction between human and robot. The most significant features of CB 2 are a whole-body soft skin (silicon surface with many tactile sensors underneath) and flexible joints (51 pneumatic actuators). The fundamental capabilities and the preliminary experiments are shown, and the future work is discussed.