This paper introduces a hierarchical framework that is capable of learning complex sequential tasks from human demonstrations through kinesthetic teaching, with minimal human intervention. Via an automatic task segmentation and action primitive discovery algorithm, we are able to learn both the high-level task decomposition (into action primitives), as well as low-level motion parameterizations for each action, in a fully integrated framework. In order to reach the desired task goal, we encode a task metric based on the evolution of the manipulated object during demonstration, and use it to sequence and parametrize each action primitive. We illustrate this framework with a pizza dough rolling task and show how the learned hierarchical knowledge is directly used for autonomous robot execution.

In this paper we discuss how the combination of modern technologies in “big data” storage and management, knowledge representation and processing, cloud-based computation, and web technology can help the robotics community to establish and strengthen an open research discipline. We describe how we made the demonstrator of a EU project review openly available to the research community. Specifically, we recorded episodic memories with rich semantic annotations during a pizza preparation experiment in autonomous robot manipulation. Afterwards, we released them as an open knowledge base using the cloud- and web-based robot knowledge service OPENEASE. We discuss several ways on how this open data can be used to validate our experimental reports and to tackle novel challenging research problems.

In this paper, we propose an approach for learning task specifications automatically, by observing human demonstrations. Using this approach allows a robot to combine representations of individual actions to achieve a high-level goal. We hypothesize that task specifications consist of variables that present a pattern of change that is invariant across demonstrations. We identify these specifications at different stages of task completion. Changes in task constraints allow us to identify transitions in the task description and to segment them into subtasks. We extract the following task-space constraints: 1) the reference frame in which to express the task variables; 2) the variable of interest at each time step, position, or force at the end effector; and 3) a factor that can modulate the contribution of force and position in a hybrid impedance controller. The approach was validated on a seven-degree-of-freedom Kuka arm, performing two different tasks: grating vegetables and extracting a battery from a charging stand.

Humans perform tasks such as bowl mixing bi-manually, but programming them on a robot can be challenging specially in tasks that require force control or on-line stiffness modulation. In this paper we first propose a user-friendly setup for demonstrating bi-manual tasks, while collecting complementary information on motion and forces sensed on a robotic arm, as well as the human hand configuration and grasp information. Secondly for learning the task we propose a method for extracting task constraints for each arm and coordination patterns between the arms. We use a statistical encoding of the data based on the extracted constraints and reproduce the task using a Cartesian impedance controller.

Emotions are key factors in the cognitive and social development of human beings. Robot artists are emotional robots that express themselves using various forms of art. Their goal must be to evoke an aesthetic experience in the audience. Emotion recognition from text is an active field of research which produced several detection methods during the last years. This paper presents the development of a cognitive system that extracts the dominant emotion from a literary text and transposes it into a graphical form using a drawing robot. This comes in the general context of a project aiming at developing robot artists capable of expressing artistic emotions.