FAME

The realization of computational models for accomplishing everyday manipulation tasks for any object and any purpose would be a disruptive breakthrough in the creation of versatile, general-purpose robot agents; and it is a grand challenge for AI and robotics. In the FAME project, I investigate the research hypothesis that a knowledge representation and reasoning (KR&R) framework based on explictly-represented and machine-interpretable inner-world models can enable robots to contextualize underdetermined manipulation task requests on the first attempt. To this end, I will design, implement, and evaluate FAME (Future-oriented cognitive Action Modelling Engine), a hybrid symbolic/subsymbolic KR&R framework that will contextualize actions by reasoning symbolically in an abstract and generalized manner but also by reasoning with “one’s eyes and hands” through mental