The concept of direction is critical for a robot to establish its abilities in spatial perception. This article addresses the issue of how a robot developmentally forms the concept of direction. We propose a novel framework, based on the related mechanisms of humans, in which motion cues are employed instead of other commonly used sensing means like vision or audition. Using motion cues is actually one of the most important ways for humans to acquire concepts. This leads to advantages in two ways: 1) models based on motion cues are usually more convenient for a robot’s control of motion and 2) multimodal perceptual cues can complement each other and result in improved robustness. The framework behind our methodology lies in developmentally forming the concept of direction in two successive phases: 1) the robot acquires the perceptual representation of its motion by motor babbling and 2) the corresponding higher level features are gradually captured, based on which the conceptual representation is obtained and then the concept of direction is formed. The proposed framework and the corresponding models are evaluated with a PKU-HR5.0II humanoid robot. The results show that the robot can successfully form the concept of direction in a manner similar to that of humans.

中文翻译：

---

形成发展方向的观念

方向的概念对于机器人建立其空间感知能力至关重要。本文解决了机器人如何在发展过程中形成方向概念的问题。我们提出了一个基于人类相关机制的新框架，其中使用运动线索代替其他常用的感知手段，如视觉或听觉。使用运动线索实际上是人类获取概念的最重要方式之一。这带来了两个方面的优势：1) 基于运动线索的模型通常更便于机器人控制运动，2) 多模态感知线索可以相互补充并提高鲁棒性。我们方法论背后的框架在于在两个连续的阶段发展性地形成方向的概念：1) 机器人通过电机咝咝声获得其运动的感知表征 2) 逐渐捕捉到相应的更高层次的特征，在此基础上获得概念表征，进而形成方向的概念。所提出的框架和相应的模型使用 PKU-HR5.0II 仿人机器人进行评估。结果表明，机器人能够以类似于人类的方式成功形成方向概念。