Hello,
You may be interested in a new approach to robotics described in my paper which has just been published in the Artificial Life journal.
"
A General Architecture for Robotics Systems: A Perception-Based Approach to Artificial Life",
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ARTL_a_00229.
The approach is based on the concept that the behaviour of living systems is a process of controlling perceptions, rather than controlling or computing (behavioural) output. In principle, the complex behaviour that we observe emerges just from a hierarchy of these simple feedback control systems, and accounts for all types and levels of behaviour.
Applying this perspective to robotics has significant implications, such as explicit, predictive models are not required, the systems are inherently adaptive and are not prone to unpredictable disturbances or changes in system parameters (e.g. weight or length of limbs), they are computationally lightweight and are comprised of a simple, universal process.
For example, this video shows control of a robot arm without the need for the complexity of predictive modelling or kinematics, [youtube]jmwH0AZtGG4[/youtube]
If you are not able to access the paper let me know and I can send you a copy.
If you'd like to hear about the progress of the development of this new technology you can subscribe to my newsletter at the top of the website (perceptualrobots.com).
Regards,
Rupert
www.perceptualrobots.com