Robot ’ s first steps , Robot ’ s first

Communication is a desirable skill for robots. We describe a method of how these skills could be learned. An architecture of connectionist models is developed to allow the learning of a simple non-grammatical language. Concepts, in the form of a word and its meaning, and numerical quantities are understood separately. A physical system of two mobile autonomous robots, teacher and student, is built to implement the architecture. Concepts relative to proprio perception, such as the agent’s movements, and extero perceptions as objects in the environment, are taught. Extension of the architecture to cover the understanding of quantities is tested by teaching the notion of distance. Teaching is done via a teacher agent to a student. Movement imitation is the means by which the language is transmitted. While following and, thus, imitating the teacher’s movements, the student agent learns to associate the teacher’s words with its own sensor perceptions.