Self-organizing reaching operation in a simulated robot via interaction of binocular and arm movements

As it has been observed in the behavior research, in reaching operation of animals, the hand performs a feedforward ballistic movement during which the vision system is watching only a target without seeing the hand simultaneously. We hypothesized that, for this, the two spaces, each of which is perceived by the eyes (eye-space) and is reached by the arm motion (arm-space) respectively, are fused into one. Human babies are supposed to gradually learn the fusion by themselves from their birth. This paper describes a self-organization of reaching operation in robots. We regarded the binocular movements as the main cue in the space perception for reaching rather than visual disparity. The eye-space as well as the arm-space is directly represented by a harmony of contractions of muscles controlling their movements. The fusion of the two spaces is obtained by a learn-by-doing manner via an interaction of the binocular and the arm movements, and is stored in a memory (CMAC) as a form of experience of these muscle contractions obtained through the interaction. During the learning process it is not necessary to know structure and parameters of robot systems at all