Approaches for action sequence representation in robotics: a review

Robust representation of actions and its sequences for complex robotic tasks would transform robot’s understand- ing to execute robotic tasks efficiently. The challenge is to under- stand action sequences for highly unstructured environments and to represent and construct action and action sequences. In this manuscript, we present a review of literature dealing with representation of action and action sequences for robot task planning and execution. The methodological review was conducted using Google Scholar and IEEE Xplore, searching the specific keywords. This manuscript gives an overview of current approaches for representing action sequences in robotics. We propose a classification of different methodologies used for action sequences representation and describe the most important aspects of the reviewed publications. This review allows the reader to understand several options that do exist in the research community, to represent and deploy such action representations in real robots

Many regression algorithms, one unified model — A review

International audienceRegression is the process of learning relationships between inputs and continuous outputs from example data, which enables predictions for novel inputs. The history of regression is closely related to the history of artificial neural networks since the seminal work of Rosenblatt (1958). The aims of this paper are to provide an overview of many regression algorithms, and to demonstrate how the function representation whose parameters they regress fall into two classes: a weighted sum of basis functions, or a mixture of linear models. Furthermore, we show that the former is a special case of the latter. Our ambition is thus to provide a deep understanding of the relationship between these algorithms, that, despite being derived from very different principles, use a function representation that can be captured within one unified model. Finally, step-by-step derivations of the algorithms from first principles and visualizations of their inner workings allow this article to be used as a tutorial for those new to regression

Fuzzy optimisation based symbolic grounding for service robots

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophySymbolic grounding is a bridge between task level planning and actual robot sensing and actuation. Uncertainties raised by unstructured environments make a bottleneck for integrating traditional artificial intelligence with service robotics. In this research, a fuzzy optimisation based symbolic grounding approach is presented. This approach can handle uncertainties and helps service robots to determine the most comfortable base region for grasping objects in a fetch and carry task. Novel techniques are applied to establish fuzzy objective function, to model fuzzy constraints and to perform fuzzy optimisation. The approach does not have the short comings of others’ work and the computation time is dramatically reduced in compare with other methods. The advantages of the proposed fuzzy optimisation based approach are evidenced by experiments that were undertaken in Care-O-bot 3 (COB 3) and Robot Operating System (ROS) platforms