Autonomous knowledge acquisition based on artificial curiosity: Application to mobile robots in an indoor environment

•Autonomous knowledge acquisition for mobile robots in a real environment.•An artificial cognitive system based on perceptual and epistemic curiosity.•Experimental results on a humanoid robot in a real office environment.

This paper describes an autonomous system for knowledge acquisition based on artificial curiosity. The proposed approach allows a humanoid robot to discover, in an indoor environment, the world in which it evolves, and to learn autonomously new knowledge about it. The learning process is accomplished by observation and by interaction with a human tutor, based on a cognitive architecture with two levels. Experimental results of deployment of this system on a humanoid robot in a real office environment are provided. We show that our cognitive system allows a humanoid robot to gain increased autonomy in matters of knowledge acquisition.