Learning from human-robot interaction

En los últimos años cada vez es más frecuente ver robots en los hogares. La robótica está cada vez más presente en muchos aspectos de nuestras vidas diarias, en aparatos de asistencia doméstica, coches autónomos o asistentes personales. La interacción entre estos robots asistentes y los usuarios es uno de los aspectos clave en la robótica de servicio. Esta interacción necesita ser cómoda e intuitiva para que sea efectiva su utilización. Estas interacciones con los usuarios son necesarias para que el robot aprenda y actualice de manera natural tanto su modelo del mundo como sus capacidades. Dentro de los sistemas roboticos de servicio, hay muchos componentes que son necesarios para su buen funcionamiento. Esta tesis esta centrada en el sistema de percepción visual de dichos sistemas.Para los humanos la percepción visual es uno de los componentes más esenciales, permitiendo tareas como reconocimiento de objetos u otras personas, o estimación de información 3D. Los grandes logros obtenidos en los últimos años en tareas de reconocimiento automático utilizan los enfoques basados en aprendizaje automático, en particular técnicas de deep learning. La mayoría de estos trabajos actuales se centran en modelos entrenados 'a priori' en un conjunto de datos muy grandes. Sin embargo, estos modelos, aunque entrenados en una gran cantidad de datos, no pueden, en general, hacer frente a los retos que aparecen al tratar con datos reales en entornos domésticos. Por ejemplo, es frecuente que se de el caso de tener nuevos objetos que no existían durante el entrenamiento de los modelos. Otro reto viene de la dispersión de los objetos, teniendo objetos que aparecen muy raramente y por lo tanto habia muy pocos, o ningún, ejemplos en los datos de entenamiento disponibles al crear el modelo.Esta tesis se ha desarrollado dentro del contexto del proyecto IGLU (Interactive Grounded Language Understanding). Dentro del proyecto y sus objetivos, el objetivo principal de esta Tesis doctoral es investigar métodos novedosos para que un robot aprenda de manera incremental mediante la interacción multimodal con el usuario.Desarrollando dicho objetivo principal, los principales trabajos desarrollados durante esta tesis han sido:-Crear un benchmark más adecuado para las tareas de aprendizaje mediante la interacción natural de usuario y robot. Por ejemplo, la mayoría de los datasets para la tarea de reconocimiento de objetos se centra en fotos de diferentes escenarios con múltiples clases por foto. Es necesario un dataset que combine interacción usuario robot con aprendizaje de objetos.-Mejorar sistemas existentes de aprendizaje de objetos y adecuarlos para aprendizaje desde la interacción multimodal humana. Los trabajos de detección de objetos se focalizan en detectar todos los objetos aprendidos en una imagen. Nuestro objetivo es usar la interacción para encontrar el objeto de referencia y aprenderlo incrementalmente.-Desarrollar métodos de aprendizaje incremental que se puedan utilizar en escenarios incrementales, p.e., la aparición de una nueva clase de objeto o cambios a lo largo del tiempo dentro de una clase objetos. Nuestro objetivo es diseñar un sistema que pueda aprender clases desde cero y que pueda actualizar los datos cuando estos aparecen.-Crear un completo prototipo para el aprendizaje incremental y multimodal usando la interacción humana-robot. Se necesita realizar la integración de los distintos métodos desarrollados como parte de los otros objetivos y evaluarlo.<br /

Trusted Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing; Trusted Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing

The successful deployment of AI solutions in manufacturing environments hinges on their security, safety and reliability which becomes more challenging in settings where multiple AI systems (e.g., industrial robots, robotic cells, Deep Neural Networks (DNNs)) interact as atomic systems and with humans. To guarantee the safe and reliable operation of AI systems in the shopfloor, there is a need to address many challenges in the scope of complex, heterogeneous, dynamic and unpredictable environments. Specifically, data reliability, human machine interaction, security, transparency and explainability challenges need to be addressed at the same time. Recent advances in AI research (e.g., in deep neural networks security and explainable AI (XAI) systems), coupled with novel research outcomes in the formal specification and verification of AI systems provide a sound basis for safe and reliable AI deployments in production lines. Moreover, the legal and regulatory dimension of safe and reliable AI solutions in production lines must be considered as well. To address some of the above listed challenges, fifteen European Organizations collaborate in the scope of the STAR project, a research initiative funded by the European Commission in the scope of its H2020 program (Grant Agreement Number: 956573). STAR researches, develops, and validates novel technologies that enable AI systems to acquire knowledge in order to take timely and safe decisions in dynamic and unpredictable environments. Moreover, the project researches and delivers approaches that enable AI systems to confront sophisticated adversaries and to remain robust against security attacks. This book is co-authored by the STAR consortium members and provides a review of technologies, techniques and systems for trusted, ethical, and secure AI in manufacturing. The different chapters of the book cover systems and technologies for industrial data reliability, responsible and transparent artificial intelligence systems, human centered manufacturing systems such as human-centred digital twins, cyber-defence in AI systems, simulated reality systems, human robot collaboration systems, as well as automated mobile robots for manufacturing environments. A variety of cutting-edge AI technologies are employed by these systems including deep neural networks, reinforcement learning systems, and explainable artificial intelligence systems. Furthermore, relevant standards and applicable regulations are discussed. Beyond reviewing state of the art standards and technologies, the book illustrates how the STAR research goes beyond the state of the art, towards enabling and showcasing human-centred technologies in production lines. Emphasis is put on dynamic human in the loop scenarios, where ethical, transparent, and trusted AI systems co-exist with human workers. The book is made available as an open access publication, which could make it broadly and freely available to the AI and smart manufacturing communities

Quality Diversity: Harnessing Evolution to Generate a Diversity of High-Performing Solutions

Evolution in nature has designed countless solutions to innumerable interconnected problems, giving birth to the impressive array of complex modern life observed today. Inspired by this success, the practice of evolutionary computation (EC) abstracts evolution artificially as a search operator to find solutions to problems of interest primarily through the adaptive mechanism of survival of the fittest, where stronger candidates are pursued at the expense of weaker ones until a solution of satisfying quality emerges. At the same time, research in open-ended evolution (OEE) draws different lessons from nature, seeking to identify and recreate processes that lead to the type of perpetual innovation and indefinitely increasing complexity observed in natural evolution. New algorithms in EC such as MAP-Elites and Novelty Search with Local Competition harness the toolkit of evolution for a related purpose: finding as many types of good solutions as possible (rather than merely the single best solution). With the field in its infancy, no empirical studies previously existed comparing these so-called quality diversity (QD) algorithms. This dissertation (1) contains the first extensive and methodical effort to compare different approaches to QD (including both existing published approaches as well as some new methods presented for the first time here) and to understand how they operate to help inform better approaches in the future. It also (2) introduces a new technique for encoding neural networks for evolution with indirect encoding that contain multiple sensory or output modalities. Further, it (3) explores the idea that QD can act as an engine of open-ended discovery by introducing an expressive platform called Voxelbuild where QD algorithms continually evolve robots that stack blocks in new ways. A culminating experiment (4) is presented that investigates evolution in Voxelbuild over a very long timescale. This research thus stands to advance the OEE community\u27s desire to create and understand open-ended systems while also laying the groundwork for QD to realize its potential within EC as a means to automatically generate an endless progression of new content in real-world applications