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Vision:
While a number of successful applications have been developed based on the conventional robotics technologies, the capabilities of current robotic systems are still far behind those of biological systems in terms of autonomy, efficiency, and adaptability in particular, which considerably restricts their application niche. In nature, animals’ motor control often utilizes highly maneuverable and efficient passive dynamics, while flexibly switching to precise and high power actuation if necessary. In nervous systems, information is processed in massively parallel networks, and they are optimized through both rapid learning and relatively long-term developmental processes. And based on these sensory-motor capabilities, a number of intelligent behaviors emerge through making use of tools, structuring environments, and social interactions and cooperation. These are the challenging problems ahead of robotics engineers and scientists, which we tackle with from an interdisciplinary viewpoint bridging over robotics, computer science and biological sciences. More specifically, the vision of Bio-Inspired Robotics Lab is to create life-like robots, and through the systematic investigations toward this goal, we rapidly and incrementally identify what are the fundamental problems and how they can be solved. The research program consists of two large subsets of investigations: first, we explore novel technologies such as sensory, motor and computational components, which enable us to develop more biologically plausible physical robotic systems. And second, based on our core technological competences, we make inroads into the fundamental questions about what discriminate animals and machines by applying an understanding-by-building approach.

Open Semester/Master Projects News