Investigation of manipulative intelligence

Manipulative Intelligence has been classified as a kind of human intelligence which is not amenable to conscious linguistic expression. Examples of what has been classified as manipulative intelligence are the tricks and knack of manipulation and assembly. Attempts to build a system that exhibits manipulative intelligence using the knowledge-based approach has been unsuccessful. At Edinburgh, the focus is to investigate such intelligence through building an intelligent assembly system based on a hybrid symbolic/behaviour-based approach. The first successful system accomplished was the SOMASS system which is capable of planning a large variety of soma parts assemblies and performing them reliably despite the presence of considerable uncertainty. Further development was carried out by adding different types of sensor to the SOMASS system. The sensors used were active mobile vision of force or tactile sensing. These systems were implemented successfully, which proved that a hybrid symbolic/behaviour-based system could be an alternative approach to building a manipulative intelligent system