11,085 research outputs found
Model-free Probabilistic Movement Primitives for physical interaction
Physical interaction in robotics is a complex problem
that requires not only accurate reproduction of the kinematic
trajectories but also of the forces and torques exhibited
during the movement. We base our approach on Movement
Primitives (MP), as MPs provide a framework for modelling
complex movements and introduce useful operations on the
movements, such as generalization to novel situations, time
scaling, and others. Usually, MPs are trained with imitation
learning, where an expert demonstrates the trajectories. However,
MPs used in physical interaction either require additional
learning approaches, e.g., reinforcement learning, or are based
on handcrafted solutions. Our goal is to learn and generate
movements for physical interaction that are learned with imitation
learning, from a small set of demonstrated trajectories.
The Probabilistic Movement Primitives (ProMPs) framework
is a recent MP approach that introduces beneficial properties,
such as combination and blending of MPs, and represents the
correlations present in the movement. The ProMPs provides
a variable stiffness controller that reproduces the movement
but it requires a dynamics model of the system. Learning such
a model is not a trivial task, and, therefore, we introduce the
model-free ProMPs, that are learning jointly the movement and
the necessary actions from a few demonstrations. We derive
a variable stiffness controller analytically. We further extent
the ProMPs to include force and torque signals, necessary for
physical interaction. We evaluate our approach in simulated
and real robot tasks
A Framework of Hybrid Force/Motion Skills Learning for Robots
Human factors and human-centred design philosophy are highly desired in today’s robotics applications such as human-robot interaction (HRI). Several studies showed that endowing robots of human-like interaction skills can not only make them more likeable but also improve their performance. In particular, skill transfer by imitation learning can increase usability and acceptability of robots by the users without computer programming skills. In fact, besides positional information, muscle stiffness of the human arm, contact force with the environment also play important roles in understanding and generating human-like manipulation behaviours for robots, e.g., in physical HRI and tele-operation. To this end, we present a novel robot learning framework based on Dynamic Movement Primitives (DMPs), taking into consideration both the positional and the contact force profiles for human-robot skills transferring. Distinguished from the conventional method involving only the motion information, the proposed framework combines two sets of DMPs, which are built to model the motion trajectory and the force variation of the robot manipulator, respectively. Thus, a hybrid force/motion control approach is taken to ensure the accurate tracking and reproduction of the desired positional and force motor skills. Meanwhile, in order to simplify the control system, a momentum-based force observer is applied to estimate the contact force instead of employing force sensors. To deploy the learned motion-force robot manipulation skills to a broader variety of tasks, the generalization of these DMP models in actual situations is also considered. Comparative experiments have been conducted using a Baxter Robot to verify the effectiveness of the proposed learning framework on real-world scenarios like cleaning a table
Understanding of Object Manipulation Actions Using Human Multi-Modal Sensory Data
Object manipulation actions represent an important share of the Activities of
Daily Living (ADLs). In this work, we study how to enable service robots to use
human multi-modal data to understand object manipulation actions, and how they
can recognize such actions when humans perform them during human-robot
collaboration tasks. The multi-modal data in this study consists of videos,
hand motion data, applied forces as represented by the pressure patterns on the
hand, and measurements of the bending of the fingers, collected as human
subjects performed manipulation actions. We investigate two different
approaches. In the first one, we show that multi-modal signal (motion, finger
bending and hand pressure) generated by the action can be decomposed into a set
of primitives that can be seen as its building blocks. These primitives are
used to define 24 multi-modal primitive features. The primitive features can in
turn be used as an abstract representation of the multi-modal signal and
employed for action recognition. In the latter approach, the visual features
are extracted from the data using a pre-trained image classification deep
convolutional neural network. The visual features are subsequently used to
train the classifier. We also investigate whether adding data from other
modalities produces a statistically significant improvement in the classifier
performance. We show that both approaches produce a comparable performance.
This implies that image-based methods can successfully recognize human actions
during human-robot collaboration. On the other hand, in order to provide
training data for the robot so it can learn how to perform object manipulation
actions, multi-modal data provides a better alternative
Learning Human-Robot Collaboration Insights through the Integration of Muscle Activity in Interaction Motion Models
Recent progress in human-robot collaboration makes fast and fluid
interactions possible, even when human observations are partial and occluded.
Methods like Interaction Probabilistic Movement Primitives (ProMP) model human
trajectories through motion capture systems. However, such representation does
not properly model tasks where similar motions handle different objects. Under
current approaches, a robot would not adapt its pose and dynamics for proper
handling. We integrate the use of Electromyography (EMG) into the Interaction
ProMP framework and utilize muscular signals to augment the human observation
representation. The contribution of our paper is increased task discernment
when trajectories are similar but tools are different and require the robot to
adjust its pose for proper handling. Interaction ProMPs are used with an
augmented vector that integrates muscle activity. Augmented time-normalized
trajectories are used in training to learn correlation parameters and robot
motions are predicted by finding the best weight combination and temporal
scaling for a task. Collaborative single task scenarios with similar motions
but different objects were used and compared. For one experiment only joint
angles were recorded, for the other EMG signals were additionally integrated.
Task recognition was computed for both tasks. Observation state vectors with
augmented EMG signals were able to completely identify differences across
tasks, while the baseline method failed every time. Integrating EMG signals
into collaborative tasks significantly increases the ability of the system to
recognize nuances in the tasks that are otherwise imperceptible, up to 74.6% in
our studies. Furthermore, the integration of EMG signals for collaboration also
opens the door to a wide class of human-robot physical interactions based on
haptic communication that has been largely unexploited in the field.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables. As submitted to Humanoids 201
Learning Task Constraints from Demonstration for Hybrid Force/Position Control
We present a novel method for learning hybrid force/position control from
demonstration. We learn a dynamic constraint frame aligned to the direction of
desired force using Cartesian Dynamic Movement Primitives. In contrast to
approaches that utilize a fixed constraint frame, our approach easily
accommodates tasks with rapidly changing task constraints over time. We
activate only one degree of freedom for force control at any given time,
ensuring motion is always possible orthogonal to the direction of desired
force. Since we utilize demonstrated forces to learn the constraint frame, we
are able to compensate for forces not detected by methods that learn only from
the demonstrated kinematic motion, such as frictional forces between the
end-effector and the contact surface. We additionally propose novel extensions
to the Dynamic Movement Primitive (DMP) framework that encourage robust
transition from free-space motion to in-contact motion in spite of environment
uncertainty. We incorporate force feedback and a dynamically shifting goal to
reduce forces applied to the environment and retain stable contact while
enabling force control. Our methods exhibit low impact forces on contact and
low steady-state tracking error.Comment: Under revie
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Simultaneously encoding movement and sEMG-based stiffness for robotic skill learning
Transferring human stiffness regulation strategies to robots enables them to effectively and efficiently acquire adaptive impedance control policies to deal with uncertainties during the accomplishment of physical contact tasks in an unstructured environment. In this work, we develop such a physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) system which allows robots to learn variable impedance skills from human demonstrations. Specifically, the biological signals, i.e., surface electromyography (sEMG) are utilized for the extraction of human arm stiffness features during the task demonstration. The estimated human arm stiffness is then mapped into a robot impedance controller. The dynamics of both movement and stiffness are simultaneously modeled by using a model combining the hidden semi-Markov model (HSMM) and the Gaussian mixture regression (GMR). More importantly, the correlation between the movement information and the stiffness information is encoded in a systematic manner. This approach enables capturing uncertainties over time and space and allows the robot to satisfy both position and stiffness requirements in a task with modulation of the impedance controller. The experimental study validated the proposed approach
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