Symbol grounding through robotic manipulation in cognitive systems

Though proposals have been put forth to solve the classical symbol grounding problem through robotic sensorimotor interactions, only little progress has been made in this direction with actual working systems, and symbol grounding through physical interaction has been rarely dealt with. We address this problem in the context of robotic manipulation for cognitive systems, and claim that there are symbols which do not refer simply to physical objects but rather to the embodied interactions between the robot and the objects in its environment. Through the description of two manipulation experiments we offer a proposal on which to build a theory of symbolic representations for physical interactions. Some important neuroscience studies that support our view are also briefly described.