Self Awareness in Robotics

A robot has been designed that is capable of building internal models of its own body, allowing it to sense damage, and recover from it. This is not the first time that robots have used sensors to monitor their bodies. What is new however, is the way in which the robots recover. Researchers believe that making robots self-aware in this way will make them better able to cope when operating in dangerous or difficult environments.

The robot fabricates a self model by checking the position of various parts of its body. It then uses these models, enabling it to internally rehearse behaviors before implementing them in reality. As robots are being made increasingly complex, the idea of enabling them to perform continuous self modeling becomes necessary.

The greatest challenge for robots is usually surviving their environment. This is typically handled by creating maps or models of the robots' surroundings. To be effective, this process has to be ongoing as the robot's environment changes, or as it's position within the environment changes. This environment modeling now works equally well for the robots, in an internal sense. Robots can be affected by either damage or degradation, which is why it is important to make them self-aware. However, while sensors monitoring limb movement can help detect damage, they don't tell the robot how it needs to adapt to complete its mission.