iCub is a robot platform; the intent is to explore the development of human-style cognition. Exploration techniques are an essential feature of human development, as anyone who raised a child knows.
(iCub crawling robot baby video)
iCub is defintely a step forward from earlier robot babies; take a look at M3-neoni:
SF fans recall the robot child portrayed by Haley Joel Osment in Steven Spielberg's AI (from Brian Aldiss' excellent 1969 short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long). I don't think he crawled, though.
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.' - Rog Philips, 1950.
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Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'