Bringing the iCub Humanoid Towards Real-World Applications

The iCub project was launched in 2004 as part of the RobotCub European Project, whose main aim was to study embodied cognition—the theory that an organism develops cognitive skills as it interacts with its environment. The main outcome of the iCub project is a one-meter-tall, 53-degrees-of-freedom humanoid currently being developed at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). Over the years, the iCub robot has been used as a research platform for diverse fields of science ranging from neuroscience to engineering. This presentation focuses on the work that the Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence research lab at IIT is carrying out with the iCub along the three axes: physical human-robot collaboration; avatar systems; and aerial humanoid robots (jet powered humanoid robots). The presentation shows how MATLAB^® and Simulink^® are fundamental for research and development for the iCub in control, planning, estimation, and artificial intelligence—and how these tools can be beneficial for humanoid robotics as a whole.