22,928 research outputs found
Online Language Learning to Perform and Describe Actions for Human-Robot Interaction
International audienceThe goal of this research is to provide a real-time and adaptive spoken langue interface between humans and a humanoid robot. The system should be able to learn new grammatical constructions in real-time, and then use them immediately following or in a later interactive session. In order to achieve this we use a recurrent neural network of 500 neurons-echo state network with leaky neurons [1]. The model processes sentences as grammatical constructions, in which the semantic words (nouns and verbs) are extracted and stored in working memory, and the grammatical words (prepositions, auxiliary verbs, etc.) are inputs to the network. The trained network outputs code the role (predicate, agent, object/location) that each semantic word takes. In the final output, the stored semantic words are then mapped onto their respective roles. The model thus learns the mappings between the grammatical structure of sentences and their meanings. The humanoid robot is an iCub [2] who interacts around a instrumented tactile table (ReacTable TM) on which objects can be manipulated by both human and robot. A sensory system has been developed to extract spatial relations. A speech recognition and text to speech off-the-shelf tool allows spoken communication. In parallel, the robot has a small set of actions (put(object, location), grasp(object), point(object)). These spatial relations, and action definitions form the meanings that are to be linked to sentences in the learned grammatical constructions. The target behavior of the system is to learn two conditions. In action performing (AP), the system should learn to generate the proper robot command, given a spoken input sentence. In scene description (SD), the system should learn to describe scenes given the extracted spatial relation. Training corpus for the neural model can be generated by the interaction with the user teaching the robot by describing spatial relations or actions, creating pairs. It could also be edited by hand to avoid speech recognition errors. These interactions between the different components of the system are shown in the Figure 1. The neural model processes grammatical constructions where semantic words (e.g. put, grasp, toy, left, right) are replaced by a common marker. This is done with only a predefined set of grammatical words (after, and, before, it, on, the, then, to, you). Therefore the model is able to deal with sentences that have the same constructions than previously seen sentences. In the AP condition, we demonstrate that the model can learn and generalize to complex sentences including "Before you put the toy on the left point the drums."; the robot will first point the drums and then put the toy on the left: showing here that the network is able to establish the proper chronological order of actions. Likewise, in the SD condition, the system can be exposed to a new scene and produce a description such as "To the left of the drums and to the right of the toy is the trumpet." In future research we can exploit this learning system in the context of human language development. In addition, the neural model could enable errors recovery from speech to text recognition. Index Terms: human-robot interaction, echo state network, online learning, iCub, language learning. References [1] H. Jaeger, "The "echo state" approach to analysing and training recurrent neural networks", Tech. Rep. GMD model has been developed with Oger toolbox: http://reservoir-computing.org/organic/engine. Figure 1: Communication between the speech recognition tool (that also controls the robotic platform) and the neural model
Conceptual spatial representations for indoor mobile robots
We present an approach for creating conceptual representations of human-made indoor environments using mobile
robots. The concepts refer to spatial and functional properties of typical indoor environments. Following ļ¬ndings
in cognitive psychology, our model is composed of layers representing maps at diļ¬erent levels of abstraction. The
complete system is integrated in a mobile robot endowed with laser and vision sensors for place and object recognition.
The system also incorporates a linguistic framework that actively supports the map acquisition process, and which
is used for situated dialogue. Finally, we discuss the capabilities of the integrated system
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
Optimization Beyond the Convolution: Generalizing Spatial Relations with End-to-End Metric Learning
To operate intelligently in domestic environments, robots require the ability
to understand arbitrary spatial relations between objects and to generalize
them to objects of varying sizes and shapes. In this work, we present a novel
end-to-end approach to generalize spatial relations based on distance metric
learning. We train a neural network to transform 3D point clouds of objects to
a metric space that captures the similarity of the depicted spatial relations,
using only geometric models of the objects. Our approach employs gradient-based
optimization to compute object poses in order to imitate an arbitrary target
relation by reducing the distance to it under the learned metric. Our results
based on simulated and real-world experiments show that the proposed method
enables robots to generalize spatial relations to unknown objects over a
continuous spectrum.Comment: Accepted for publication at ICRA2018. Supplementary Video:
http://spatialrelations.cs.uni-freiburg.de
Metric Learning for Generalizing Spatial Relations to New Objects
Human-centered environments are rich with a wide variety of spatial relations
between everyday objects. For autonomous robots to operate effectively in such
environments, they should be able to reason about these relations and
generalize them to objects with different shapes and sizes. For example, having
learned to place a toy inside a basket, a robot should be able to generalize
this concept using a spoon and a cup. This requires a robot to have the
flexibility to learn arbitrary relations in a lifelong manner, making it
challenging for an expert to pre-program it with sufficient knowledge to do so
beforehand. In this paper, we address the problem of learning spatial relations
by introducing a novel method from the perspective of distance metric learning.
Our approach enables a robot to reason about the similarity between pairwise
spatial relations, thereby enabling it to use its previous knowledge when
presented with a new relation to imitate. We show how this makes it possible to
learn arbitrary spatial relations from non-expert users using a small number of
examples and in an interactive manner. Our extensive evaluation with real-world
data demonstrates the effectiveness of our method in reasoning about a
continuous spectrum of spatial relations and generalizing them to new objects.Comment: Accepted at the 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent
Robots and Systems. The new Freiburg Spatial Relations Dataset and a demo
video of our approach running on the PR-2 robot are available at our project
website: http://spatialrelations.cs.uni-freiburg.d
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