engineering

ICub

ICub is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand ICub rather than just read about it. In short: iCub is a one meter tall open source robotics humanoid robot testbed for research into human cognition and artificial intelligence. It was designed by the RobotCub Consortium of several European universities, built by Italian Institute of Technology, and is now supported by other projects such as ITALK.

Key takeaways

ICub belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect ICub to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of ICub from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

iCub is a one meter tall open source robotics humanoid robot testbed for research into human cognition and artificial intelligence. It was designed by the RobotCub Consortium of several European universities, built by Italian Institute of Technology, and is now supported by other projects such as ITALK. The robot is open-source, with the hardware design, software and documentation all released under the GPL license. The name is a partial acronym, cub standing for Cognitive Universal Body. Initial funding for the project was €8.5 million from Unit E5 – Cognitive Systems and Robotics – of the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme, and this ran for 65 months from 1 September 2004 until 31 January 2010. The motivation behind the strongly humanoid design is the embodied cognition hypothesis, that human-like manipulation plays a vital role in the development of human cognition. A baby learns many cognitive skills by interacting with its environment and other humans using its limbs and senses, and consequently its internal model of the world is largely determined by the form of the human body. The robot was designed to test this hypothesis by allowing cognitive learning scenarios to be acted out by an accurate reproduction of the perceptual system, and an articulation of a small child so that it could interact with the world in the same way that such a child does.

Specifications

The dimensions of the iCub are similar to that of a 3.5-year-old child. The robot is controlled by an on-board PC104 controller which communicates with actuators and sensors using CANBus. It utilises tendon driven joints for the hand and shoulder, with the fingers flexed by teflon-coated cable tendons running inside teflon-coated tubes, and pulling against spring returns. Joint angles are measured using custom-designed Hall-effect sensors and the robot can be equipped with torque sensors. The finger tips can be equipped with tactile touch sensors, and a distributed capacitive sensor skin is being developed. The software library is largely written in C++ and uses YARP for external communication via Gigabit Ethernet with off-board software implementing higher level functionality, the development of which has been taken over by the RobotCub Consortium. The robot was not designed for autonomous operation, and is consequently not equipped with onboard batteries or processors required for this —instead an umbilical cable provides power and a network connection. In its final version, the robot has 53 actuated degrees of freedom organized as follows:

7 in each arm 9 in each hand (3 for the thumb, 2 for the index, 2 for the middle finger, 1 for the coupled ring and little finger, 1 for the adduction/abduction) 6 in the head (3 for the neck and 3 for the cameras) 3 in the torso/waist 6 in each leg The head has stereo cameras in a swivel mounting where eyes would be located on a human and microphones on the side. It also has lines of red LEDs representing mouth and eyebrows mounted behind the face panel for making facial expressions. Since the first robots were constructed the design has undergone several revisions and improvements, for example smaller and more dexterous hands, and lighter, more robust legs with greater joint angles and which permit walking rather than just crawling.

Capabilities of iCub

The iCub has been demonstrated with capabilities to successfully perform the following tasks, among others:

crawling, using visual guidance with optic marker on the floor solving complex 3D mazes archery, shooting arrows with a bow and learning to hit the center of the target facial expressions, allowing the iCub to express emotions force control, exploiting proximal force/torque sensors grasping small objects, such as balls, plastic bottles, etc. collision avoidance within non-static environments, as well as, self-collision avoidance

iCubs in the world

These robots were built by Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Genoa and are used by a small but lively community of scientists that use the iCub to study embodied cognition in artificial systems. There are about thirty iCubs in various laboratories mainly in the European Union but also one in the United States. The first researcher in North America to be granted an iCub was Stephen E. Levinson, for studies of computational models of the brain and mind and language acquisition. The robots are constructed by IIT and cost about €250,000 each depending upon the version. Most of the financial support comes from the European Commission's Unit E5 or the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) via the recently created iCub Facility department. The development and construction of iCub at IIT is part of an independent documentary film called Plug & Pray which was released in 2010.

See also Android Artificial intelligence Cyborg Ibn Sina Robot Robotics

References

External links

Nosengo, Nicola (27 August 2009). "Robotics: The bot that plays ball" (PDF). Nature. 460 (7259): 1076–8. doi:10.1038/4601076a. PMID 19713909. Retrieved 30 July 2010. - Nature article about the iCub. YouTube Channel - a YouTube channel about the iCub. iCub presentations - from the Humanoid robotics symposium 2010. IROS'10 - Videos and workshop on iCub research (2010). Toward Intelligent Humanoids - Video showing current abilities of the iCub (2012) RobotCub Consortium the iCub project

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with ICub

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what ICub claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to ICub before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about ICub ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of ICub

In research: ICub appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses ICub in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: ICub is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2004 robots, Bipedal humanoid robots, Open-source robots, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for ICub outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study ICub in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what ICub means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain ICub out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is ICub in simple terms?

Why does ICub matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study ICub?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on ICub.