Robotics and Embodiment

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Scope

Repositories connecting Hyperon/OpenCog to physical robots, ROS, and sensory/motor I/O. This family covers physical and software-domain embodiment — hardware robotics, ROS integration, and abstract sensory/motor primitives. Game-world embodiment (Minecraft, simulated environments) is covered in Game Worlds and Simulated Environments.

Active Repositories

Modern Stack (ROS 2 / MeTTa)

RepoLanguageMaturityPurpose
nartech_rosPython / MeTTaExperimentalROS 2 + Gazebo platform combining NARS reasoning, MeTTa symbolic AI, YOLOv8 vision, Nav2 navigation, MoveIt arm control, and semantic SLAM. TurtleBot4/OpenManipulator simulation.

Legacy Hanson Robotics Stack (ROS 1 / GHOST / 2015–2017)

RepoLanguageMaturityPurpose
ghost_bridgePython / GuileLegacyROS bridge connecting Hanson Robotics head hardware to OpenCog GHOST chatbot. Actions: say, gaze, blink, emote, gesture. Perceptions: emotion, face, speech. Requires Hanson HR HEAD workspace.
ros-behavior-scriptingPython / GuileLegacyROS sensory/motor nodes for Hanson Eva robot — face tracking/recognition, sound direction, 3D perception, motor control via spacetime server. Robot names: han, sophia10.
TinyCogC++ / GuileLegacyEmbedded robotics on Raspberry Pi 3 — face detection, emotion recognition, gesture analysis, STT/TTS, with GHOST for reasoning. Pre-built Debian image available.

Abstract Sensory/Motor Primitives

RepoLanguageMaturityPurpose
sensoryC++ / GuileExperimentalLow-level sensory I/O Atoms for AtomSpace — filesystem, IRC, TCP/Unix sockets, terminal, Ollama LLM integration. "Basal cognition" research framework. Software-domain sensing, not hardware sensors.
motorGuile / PythonExperimentalSensori-motor crawler with structural similarity and iterative exploration refinement. Software-domain motor actions (filesystem crawling). Complement to sensory project.
spacetimeC++ / GuileLegacy4D spacetime coordinate server for AtomSpace using OctoMap. Stores/queries atom positions across space and time. Infrastructure used by ros-behavior-scripting.
visionC++ / Guile / PythonExperimentalAtomese wrappers around OpenCV — ImageValues hold image handles, Links specify blur/resize/filter/write transformations as abstract processing trees.

How They Fit Together

This family spans three eras and two conceptual frames:

Physical robotics (2015–2017): ghost_bridge + ros-behavior-scripting + TinyCog formed a working pipeline for Hanson Robotics robots (Eva, Sophia). ghost_bridge handled GHOST chatbot ↔ ROS messaging; ros-behavior-scripting handled perception and motor control; spacetime provided 4D spatial indexing; TinyCog targeted embedded RPi hardware. This stack is legacy — pinned to ROS 1 Kinetic, TensorFlow 1.8, and the Hanson HR HEAD workspace.

Modern robotics (2024+): nartech_ros is the only current robotics integration, built on ROS 2 with modern dependencies (YOLOv8, Nav2, MoveIt, Gazebo). It connects NARS reasoning and MeTTa symbolic AI to robot control — the Hyperon-era successor to the Hanson pipeline.

Abstract embodiment: sensory + motor implement a "basal cognition" research framework where the AtomSpace itself is the embodied environment — file systems become sensory fields, network sockets become perception channels. These are independently maintained by original OpenCog contributors and explore a conceptual framing where any I/O surface is a form of embodiment.

Quick Start

# nartech_ros (modern, requires ROS 2 + Gazebo)
bash start/start_nartech.bash metta demo_with_nars.metta

# sensory (requires cogutil + atomspace)
cd sensory && mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. && make -j4 && ctest

# Legacy ghost_bridge (requires ROS Kinetic + Hanson HEAD)
catkin_make && rosrun ghost_bridge run.sh

Excluded from This Family

  • Vereya, minecraft-demo, minecraft-experiments, AIRIS-client: Game-world embodiment — covered in Game Worlds and Simulated Environments.
  • FabricPC: JAX predictive coding library — pure ML, no robotics coupling.
  • loving-ai-ghost: GHOST dialogue content scripts only — no hardware/robot coupling.

Current State vs. Whitepaper

  • Game AI and Social Robotics (whitepaper §9): The whitepaper describes Minecraft and social robotics as application domains. nartech_ros is the closest existing implementation to the social robotics vision.
  • Embodied cognition loop: The PRIMUS ambient/goal-directed cognitive cycle has no end-to-end robotics demonstration yet. nartech_ros provides the closest integration point.

Gaps and Consolidation Opportunities

  • Massive stack gap between legacy and modern: The Hanson-era repos are pinned to 2017 dependencies. nartech_ros is the sole modern entry point.
  • sensory/motor are independently maintained: These are part of the classical OpenCog stack maintained outside the Hyperon project, not coordinated with Hyperon development.
  • No MeTTa-native perception pipeline: Vision processing is still C++/OpenCV wrapping. A MeTTa-native perception layer is missing.
  • nartech_ros hardcodes paths: Uses /home/nartech absolute paths, limiting portability.



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