We present and evaluate an approach for human-in-the-loop specification of shape reconstruction with annotations for basic robot-object interactions. Our method is based on the idea of model annotation: the addition of simple cues to an underlying object model to specify shape and delineate a simple task. The goal is to explore reducing the complexity of CAD-like interfaces so that novice users can quickly recover an object's shape and describe a manipulation task that is then carried out by a robot. The object modeling and interaction annotation capabilities are tested with a user study and compared against results obtained using existing approaches. The approach has been analyzed using a variety of shape comparison, grasping, and manipulation metrics, and tested with the PR2 robot platform, where it was shown to be successful.
Learning from Demonstration (LfD) offers an alternative to the active addition of annotations in post-processing. In LfD, the parameters of actuation are implicitly refined through the observation of examples provided by humans. This happens because under this strategy, perception-action systems are built specifically to follow human actions and replicate them within their own circumstances (like different kinematic structures or safety constraints). See @cite_87 for a thorough review.
@cite_87
1986014385
Learning from Demonstration (LfD) explores techniques for learning a task policy from examples provided by a human teacher. The field of LfD has grown into an extensive body of literature over the past 30 years, with a wide variety of approaches for encoding human demonstrations and modeling skills and tasks. Additionally, we have recently seen a focus on gathering data from non-expert human teachers (i.e., domain experts but not robotics experts). In this book, we provide an introduction to the field with a focus on the unique technical challenges associated with designing robots that learn from naive human teachers. We begin, in the introduction, with a unification of the various terminology seen in the literature as well as an outline of the design choices one has in designing an LfD system. Chapter 2 gives a brief survey of the psychology literature that provides insights from human social learning that are relevant to designing robotic social learners. Chapter 3 walks through an LfD interaction, surveying the design choices one makes and state of the art approaches in prior work. First, is the choice of input, how the human teacher interacts with the robot to provide demonstrations. Next, is the choice of modeling technique. Currently, there is a dichotomy in the field between approaches that model low-level motor skills and those that model high-level tasks composed of primitive actions. We devote a chapter to each of these. Chapter 7 is devoted to interactive and active learning approaches that allow the robot to refine an existing task model. And finally, Chapter 8 provides best practices for evaluation of LfD systems, with a focus on how to approach experiments with human subjects in this domain. We present a comprehensive survey of robot Learning from Demonstration (LfD), a technique that develops policies from example state to action mappings. We introduce the LfD design choices in terms of demonstrator, problem space, policy derivation and performance, and contribute the foundations for a structure in which to categorize LfD research. Specifically, we analyze and categorize the multiple ways in which examples are gathered, ranging from teleoperation to imitation, as well as the various techniques for policy derivation, including matching functions, dynamics models and plans. To conclude we discuss LfD limitations and related promising areas for future research. Trajectory optimization is an essential tool for motion planning under multiple constraints of robotic manipulators. Optimization-based methods can explicitly optimize a trajectory by leveraging prior knowledge of the system and have been used in various applications such as collision avoidance. However, these methods often require a hand-coded cost function in order to achieve the desired behavior. Specifying such cost function for a complex desired behavior, e.g., disentangling a rope, is a nontrivial task that is often even infeasible. Learning from demonstration (LfD) methods offer an alternative way to program robot motion. LfD methods are less dependent on analytical models and instead learn the behavior of experts implicitly from the demonstrated trajectories. However, the problem of adapting the demonstrations to new situations, e.g., avoiding newly introduced obstacles, has not been fully investigated in the literature. In this letter, we present a motion planning framework that combines the advantages of optimization-based and demonstration-based methods. We learn a distribution of trajectories demonstrated by human experts and use it to guide the trajectory optimization process. The resulting trajectory maintains the demonstrated behaviors, which are essential to performing the task successfully, while adapting the trajectory to avoid obstacles. In simulated experiments and with a real robotic system, we verify that our approach optimizes the trajectory to avoid obstacles and encodes the demonstrated behavior in the resulting trajectory. Human activity is extremely complex. Current technology allows us to handcraft real-time perception systems for a specific perceptual task. However, such an approach is inadequate for building systems that accommodate the variety that is typical of human environments. In this paper we define a framework for context aware observation of human activity. A context in this framework is defined as a network of situations. A situation network is interpreted as a specification for a federation of processes to observe humans and their actions. We present a process-based software architecture for building systems for observing activity. We discuss methods for building systems using this framework. The framework and methods are illustrated with examples from observation of human activity in an “Augmented Meeting Environment”.