4,269 research outputs found
Analysis and Observations from the First Amazon Picking Challenge
This paper presents a overview of the inaugural Amazon Picking Challenge
along with a summary of a survey conducted among the 26 participating teams.
The challenge goal was to design an autonomous robot to pick items from a
warehouse shelf. This task is currently performed by human workers, and there
is hope that robots can someday help increase efficiency and throughput while
lowering cost. We report on a 28-question survey posed to the teams to learn
about each team's background, mechanism design, perception apparatus, planning
and control approach. We identify trends in this data, correlate it with each
team's success in the competition, and discuss observations and lessons learned
based on survey results and the authors' personal experiences during the
challenge
Learning 3D Navigation Protocols on Touch Interfaces with Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Using touch devices to navigate in virtual 3D environments such as computer
assisted design (CAD) models or geographical information systems (GIS) is
inherently difficult for humans, as the 3D operations have to be performed by
the user on a 2D touch surface. This ill-posed problem is classically solved
with a fixed and handcrafted interaction protocol, which must be learned by the
user. We propose to automatically learn a new interaction protocol allowing to
map a 2D user input to 3D actions in virtual environments using reinforcement
learning (RL). A fundamental problem of RL methods is the vast amount of
interactions often required, which are difficult to come by when humans are
involved. To overcome this limitation, we make use of two collaborative agents.
The first agent models the human by learning to perform the 2D finger
trajectories. The second agent acts as the interaction protocol, interpreting
and translating to 3D operations the 2D finger trajectories from the first
agent. We restrict the learned 2D trajectories to be similar to a training set
of collected human gestures by first performing state representation learning,
prior to reinforcement learning. This state representation learning is
addressed by projecting the gestures into a latent space learned by a
variational auto encoder (VAE).Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. Accepted at The European Conference on Machine
Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases 2019
(ECMLPKDD 2019
Dexterous Manipulation Graphs
We propose the Dexterous Manipulation Graph as a tool to address in-hand
manipulation and reposition an object inside a robot's end-effector. This graph
is used to plan a sequence of manipulation primitives so to bring the object to
the desired end pose. This sequence of primitives is translated into motions of
the robot to move the object held by the end-effector. We use a dual arm robot
with parallel grippers to test our method on a real system and show successful
planning and execution of in-hand manipulation
Humanoid Robots
For many years, the human being has been trying, in all ways, to recreate the complex mechanisms that form the human body. Such task is extremely complicated and the results are not totally satisfactory. However, with increasing technological advances based on theoretical and experimental researches, man gets, in a way, to copy or to imitate some systems of the human body. These researches not only intended to create humanoid robots, great part of them constituting autonomous systems, but also, in some way, to offer a higher knowledge of the systems that form the human body, objectifying possible applications in the technology of rehabilitation of human beings, gathering in a whole studies related not only to Robotics, but also to Biomechanics, Biomimmetics, Cybernetics, among other areas. This book presents a series of researches inspired by this ideal, carried through by various researchers worldwide, looking for to analyze and to discuss diverse subjects related to humanoid robots. The presented contributions explore aspects about robotic hands, learning, language, vision and locomotion
The Mechanics of Embodiment: A Dialogue on Embodiment and Computational Modeling
Embodied theories are increasingly challenging traditional views of cognition by arguing that conceptual representations that constitute our knowledge are grounded in sensory and motor experiences, and processed at this sensorimotor level, rather than being represented and processed abstractly in an amodal conceptual system. Given the established empirical foundation, and the relatively underspecified theories to date, many researchers are extremely interested in embodied cognition but are clamouring for more mechanistic implementations. What is needed at this stage is a push toward explicit computational models that implement sensory-motor grounding as intrinsic to cognitive processes. In this article, six authors from varying backgrounds and approaches address issues concerning the construction of embodied computational models, and illustrate what they view as the critical current and next steps toward mechanistic theories of embodiment. The first part has the form of a dialogue between two fictional characters: Ernest, the �experimenter�, and Mary, the �computational modeller�. The dialogue consists of an interactive sequence of questions, requests for clarification, challenges, and (tentative) answers, and touches the most important aspects of grounded theories that should inform computational modeling and, conversely, the impact that computational modeling could have on embodied theories. The second part of the article discusses the most important open challenges for embodied computational modelling
Recognition and Estimation of Human Finger Pointing with an RGB Camera for Robot Directive
In communication between humans, gestures are often preferred or
complementary to verbal expression since the former offers better spatial
referral. Finger pointing gesture conveys vital information regarding some
point of interest in the environment. In human-robot interaction, a user can
easily direct a robot to a target location, for example, in search and rescue
or factory assistance. State-of-the-art approaches for visual pointing
estimation often rely on depth cameras, are limited to indoor environments and
provide discrete predictions between limited targets. In this paper, we explore
the learning of models for robots to understand pointing directives in various
indoor and outdoor environments solely based on a single RGB camera. A novel
framework is proposed which includes a designated model termed PointingNet.
PointingNet recognizes the occurrence of pointing followed by approximating the
position and direction of the index finger. The model relies on a novel
segmentation model for masking any lifted arm. While state-of-the-art human
pose estimation models provide poor pointing angle estimation accuracy of
28deg, PointingNet exhibits mean accuracy of less than 2deg. With the pointing
information, the target is computed followed by planning and motion of the
robot. The framework is evaluated on two robotic systems yielding accurate
target reaching
Human-Robot Collaborations in Industrial Automation
Technology is changing the manufacturing world. For example, sensors are being used to track inventories from the manufacturing floor up to a retail shelf or a customer’s door. These types of interconnected systems have been called the fourth industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, and are projected to lower manufacturing costs. As industry moves toward these integrated technologies and lower costs, engineers will need to connect these systems via the Internet of Things (IoT). These engineers will also need to design how these connected systems interact with humans. The focus of this Special Issue is the smart sensors used in these human–robot collaborations
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