Work-in-progress: exploring sensorimotor contingencies in robots

This blog shows the work-in-progress by me (Chris Jack) on building simple robots to demonstrate sensorimotor contingencies as they explore themselves and the world around them.

The 1st video below shows a robot called 'Spongebot' (aka noisiest-robot-in-the-world) that is designed to demonstrate the sensorimotor loops involved in squeezing diferent objects or tapping its fingers together. Here you see it at the stage of demonstrating a straightforward reflexive behaviour whereby the fingers retreat backward when a certain pressure of grip is sensed on the object - in this case a ball of steel or, at the end of the video, between the fingers themselves.

This second video shows a now defunct design to build a robot which could autonomously play the traditional English pub game known as Devil Amongst the Tailors or, more plainly, Bar Skittles.