by Professor Gordon Cheng
Mar 5, 2014
Professor Gordon Cheng, Professor and Chair of Cognitive Systems, Institute for Cognitive Systems (ICS), Technical University of Munich, gave a lecture on March 5, 2014 titled “Interaction between Humanoid Robotics and NeuroScience” at Theatre C, Chow Yei Ching Building.
We are on the verge of a new era of rapid transformations in both science and engineering, a transformation that brought together technological advancements in a fusion that shall accelerate both Science and Robotics. This talk brings together works under a new direction of robotics research.
The utility of robots is prevailing great promises not only in industrial automation, but more recently, it has also been taken on by Neuroscientists as a tool to aid in the discovery of mechanisms in the brain. In particular, with the emergence of numerous advanced humanoid robots, unlike usual robotic systems, these highly sophisticated human-like machines are equipped with human-like sensory and motor capabilities. These robots are now among us in contributing to our scientific endeavors. Aiming to better assist the greater mankind, engineers are motivated to look more closely at other scientific findings for creating innovative solutions that could better co-exist in our common society.
Fusion of advanced technologies, at varying degrees of sophistication with rapid discoveries, are being formed in Neuroscience and other disciplines in furthering our understanding of ourselves, the Brain.
Unlike previous attempts at emulating biological systems, we embark on an attempt to emulate higher-order biological systems, namely, humans. The recent triumph in the field of robotics has been the advanced development of humanoid robots, systems that have long been covered as ultimate achievement for robot developers. A fully sophisticated robotic system that is similar to human, with similar sensory modality and general attribute as humans can provide as a tool for endless exploration. Such effort has gone on since the beginning of man-made machines. The diversity of such a system can provide large avenues of possible bidirectional explorations between neuroscience and robotics.
This talk highlighted some of Professor Cheng's works in the interaction between Humanoid Robotics and NeuroScience.
