Perceptual robotics is an interdisciplinary science linking Robotics

Robotics

Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...

 and Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...

. It investigates biologically motivated robot control strategies, concentrating on perceptual

Perception

Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...

 rather than cognitive

Cognition

In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...

 processes and thereby sides with J. J. Gibson

J. J. Gibson

James Jerome Gibson , was an American psychologist, born in McConnelsville, Ohio, who received his Ph.D. from Princeton University's Department of Psychology, and is considered one of the most important 20th century psychologists in the field of visual perception...

's view against the Poverty of the stimulus

Poverty of the stimulus

In linguistics, the poverty of the stimulus is the assertion that natural language grammar is unlearnable given the relatively limited data available to children learning a language, and therefore that this knowledge is supplemented with some sort of innate linguistic capacity...

 theory.

As a working definition, the following quote from Chapter 64 by H. Bülthoff, C. Wallraven and M. Giese from The Springer Handbook of Robotics, edited by B. Siciliano and O. Khatib, published by Springer in 2007, could be used:

In the following we will apply the term Perceptual Robotics to signify the design of robots based on principles that are derived from human perception on all three levels in the sense of Marr. This includes a realization in terms of specific neural circuits as well as the transfer of more abstract biologically-inspired strategies for the solution of relevant computational problems.

See also

David Marr (neuroscientist) (including a short description of the three levels of perception)

PERCRO Perceptual Robotics Laboratory, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy