Biologicky realistický model vývoje reprezentace těla

• Thesis title in Czech: Biologicky realistický model vývoje reprezentace těla
• Thesis title in English: Biologically plausible model of body representation development
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2024/2025
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Department: Department of Software and Computer Science Education (32-KSVI)
• Supervisor: Mgr. Ján Antolík, Ph.D.

Guidelines

This project is performed in tight collaboration with the robotics group of Matej Hoffman. The goal of this project is to explain how body representations can be learned in humanoid robots during haptic self-exploration based on inputs provided by ‘artificial skin’ covering the robot’s body. We hypothesize that our previous model of cortical development of primary visual cortex [1] can aid this goal in following way: the model itself, when fed with the somatosensory data will form effective, biologically plausible representation of body surface


Specification of taks:
Following up on Hoffmann, Straka et al. [2], use a more biologically motivated architecture [1] on data from [2]. Based on statistics about spontaneous movements of newborns (e.g. DiMercurio et al.[3]), the movements can be replayed in the iCub gazebo simulator (https://youtu.be/RAdbk1a0JFY) and the tactile activations from there used for learning. Encoding of input: Only binary taxel activations were used in Hoffmann, Straka et al. (2018). There is a possibility to also use pressure values.

The student will test these hypotheses in collaboration with the Hoffman group. Student will implement and validate the model of somatosensory map formation from artificial skin inputs, perform experiments to confirm effectiveness of the model and search for bio-morphic correlates in the resulting behavior.

References

[1] Stevens, J.-L. R., Law, J. S., Antolík, J., & Bednar, J. A. (2013). Mechanisms for stable, robust, and adaptive development of orientation maps in the primary visual cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33, 15747–66
[2] Hoffmann, M.; Straka, Z.; Farkas, I.; Vavrecka, M. & Metta, G. (2018), 'Robotic homunculus: Learning of artificial skin representation in a humanoid robot motivated by primary somatosensory cortex', IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems 10 (2), 163-176.
[3] DiMercurio, A., Connell, J. P., Clark, M., & Corbetta, D. (2018). A naturalistic observation of spontaneous touches to the body and environment in the first 2 months of life. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 2613.
[4] Hoffmann, M. & Bednarova, N. (2016), The encoding of proprioceptive inputs in the brain: knowns and unknowns from a robotic perspective, in M. Vavrecka; O. Becev; M. Hoffmann & K. Stepanova, ed., 'Kognice a umělý život XVI [Cognition and Artificial Life XVI]', pp. 55-66. [pdf]