Beata J. Grzyb

Contact

e-Mail:	grzyb AT icc.uji.es
Office:	TI-2110-DD, Robotic Intelligence Laboratory, Universitat Jaume I
Address:	Avda. Vicente Sos Baynat s/n, E-12071, Castelló, Spain
Tel:	+34 964 728 292
Fax:	+34 964 728 486

Short biography

Beata has the following academic background:

• Present: PhD student at Robotics Intelligence Lab (Universitat Jaume I), Castellón, Spain. Thesis title: Multimodal Sensorimotor Experience for Body Schema Development.
• May 2007: MSc in Computer Science, http://www.umcs.lublin.pl/, Lublin, Poland. Specialization: Information Technology. Thesis title: Alternative neuron models and properties of their networks, director prof. Wieslaw Kaminski.
• June 2002: BSc in Marketing and Management, http://www.umcs.lublin.pl/ in Lublin, Poland.

Furthermore, she has done this stays:

• July 15 - October 7, 2005: an intern to the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) Network Informatics Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan. Working in a research team on the development of semi-physical semi-simulated robotic system. Creating a model of basic emotions and implementing an emotion expression system.
• August 18 - September 15, 2004: an intern to the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) Network Informatics Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan. Participation in the Artificial Brain Project research activities by performing own experiments in machine psychodynamics and development of brain-building tools.

Research

My current work is focused on creating a model of bodily self development for a robot. The model will be based on neurophysiological and psychological studies in humans. The bodily sense of self is understood here as a sense of one's own body as a differentiated agent situated in the environment, and includes topics, such as: body representations, sense of embodiment, sense of agency.

The general idea of the model is to make use of the Piaget's primary and secondary circular reactions:

• During the first stage of development the robot performs simple, repetitive actions, that involve its body. While engaging in these acts, the robot experiences pleasure, which pushes it to reproduce them. The dynamic patterns of movements and resulting end-states are being monitored proprioceptively and vestibulary, and thus a basic body schema that includes kinematics and dynamics is constructed. Having acquired some basic movements, the interplay between motor system and sensory systems may be triggered and different kinds of bodily senses, such as visual, tactile, and proprioceptive originating from self-observation are combined and cross-referenced. During self-produced movements the correlation between motor comands and motion in the visual field is used to outline the body silhouette. Once the boundary of the body is marked, the robot begins to investigate its body with tactile sensors. Combined double touch and multimodal correlation allow the robot to learn that its body is a distinct entity in the environment.
• The second stage of developing a bodily self, after self-observation, is interaction with the environment. The sensory-motor actions, such as looking at the object, pointing, touching, moving the fingers over a surface or along an edge, manipulation etc., provide a lot of experience for further development of the body representation and perception.

The poster presented during the 8th Epigenetic Robotics conference can be download here.