We all learn through imitation. What ever skill we wish to acquire;
from painting a wall, to painting a landscape, to giving a public speech
we normally seek the advice of someone already skilled in these matters.
To gain this skill we will often observe a person demonstrating the
particular skill and then imitate what we saw. Through observing we
can hopefully acquire enough information to then perform the task without
supervision from the person (expert). The person demonstrating the
skill is transmitting the required knowledge to the person or people watching.
It is a very efficient means of conveying knowledge.
So why would robotics be concerned with imitation. It is hoped that
imitation could take away the arduous task of programming. Programming
a robot is a long lengthy process something that has to be performed by someone
competent in this particular skill. If a robot could observer a human
performing a task and then imitate this action then we would have achieved
a form of "programming by example". This would make it possible for
a person without programming skills able to teach a robot, it would make
it possible for this person to be able to "program by example". Alan Turing was the first perhaps
to suggest this theory he said "sometimes learning would be more efficient
if it was achieved through the robot or machine imitating rather being programmed".
There is another reason why our work with the AuRoRA project is interested
in imitation. People with autism can suffer from a lack of the ability
to imitate, in turn causing a lack of learning. This can be a hugh handicap
in life. If you do not posses the skill of "imitation" it is very difficult
to learn and progress, it can also hinder you socially. Quite often
imitation is used as form of communication between people. Not being
able to join in with imitation can give a sense to social exclusion.
So not only are we learning about imitation through experiments with robots
but also we may also be able to help autistic children with the skill of imitating
something that the rest of us take for granted.
