Robot learning is a research field at the intersection of
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
and
robotics
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...
. It studies techniques allowing a robot to acquire novel skills or adapt to its environment through learning algorithms. The embodiment of the robot, situated in a physical embedding, provides at the same time specific difficulties (e.g. high-dimensionality, real time constraints for collecting data and learning) and opportunities for guiding the learning process (e.g. sensorimotor synergies, motor primitives).
Example of skills that are targeted by learning algorithms include sensorimotor skills such as locomotion, grasping, active
object categorization, as well as interactive skills such as joint manipulation of an object with a human peer, and linguistic skills such as the grounded and situated
meaning of human language. Learning can happen either through autonomous self-exploration or through guidance from a human teacher, like for example in robot learning by imitation.
Robot learning can be closely related to
adaptive control Adaptive control is the control method used by a controller which must adapt to a controlled system with parameters which vary, or are initially uncertain. For example, as an aircraft flies, its mass will slowly decrease as a result of fuel consumpt ...
,
reinforcement learning
Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine ...
as well as
developmental robotics
Developmental robotics (DevRob), sometimes called epigenetic robotics, is a scientific field which aims at studying the developmental mechanisms, architectures and constraints that allow lifelong and open-ended learning of new skills and new knowle ...
which considers the problem of autonomous lifelong acquisition of repertoires of skills.
While
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
is frequently used by
computer vision
Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...
algorithms employed in the context of robotics, these applications are usually not referred to as "robot learning".
Projects
Maya Cakmak, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
, is trying to create a robot that learns by imitating - a technique called "
programming by demonstration
In computer science, programming by demonstration (PbD) is an end-user development technique for teaching a computer or a robot new behaviors by demonstrating the task to transfer directly instead of programming it through machine commands.
The te ...
". A researcher shows it a cleaning technique for the robot's vision system and it generalizes the cleaning motion from the human demonstration as well as identifying the "state of dirt" before and after cleaning.
Similarly the
Baxter industrial robot can be taught how to do something by grabbing its arm and showing it the desired movements. It can also use deep learning to teach itself to grasp an unknown object.
[
]
Sharing learned skills and knowledge
In Tellex's "Million Object Challenge," the goal is robots that learn how to spot and handle simple items and upload their data to the cloud to allow other robots to analyze and use the information.
RoboBrain is a knowledge engine for robots which can be freely accessed by any device wishing to carry out a task. The database gathers new information about tasks as robots perform them, by searching the Internet, interpreting natural language text, images, and videos, object recognition
Object recognition – technology in the field of computer vision for finding and identifying objects in an image or video sequence. Humans recognize a multitude of objects in images with little effort, despite the fact that the image of the ...
as well as interaction. The project is led by Ashutosh Saxena
Ashutosh Saxena is an Indian-American computer scientist, researcher, and entrepreneur known for his contributions to the field of artificial intelligence and robotics. His research interests include deep learning, robotics, and 3-dimensional co ...
at Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
.
RoboEarth is a project that has been described as a "World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
for robots" − it is a network and database repository where robots can share information and learn from each other and a cloud for outsourcing heavy computation tasks. The project brings together researchers from five major universities in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain and is backed by the European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
.
Google Research, DeepMind
DeepMind Technologies is a British artificial intelligence subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. and research laboratory founded in 2010. DeepMind was List of mergers and acquisitions by Google, acquired by Google in 2014 and became a wholly owned subsid ...
, and Google X
X Development LLC (formerly Google X) is an American semi-secret research and development facility and organization founded by Google in January 2010, which now operates as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. X has its headquarters about a mile and a ...
have decided to allow their robots share their experiences.
See also
* Developmental robotics
Developmental robotics (DevRob), sometimes called epigenetic robotics, is a scientific field which aims at studying the developmental mechanisms, architectures and constraints that allow lifelong and open-ended learning of new skills and new knowle ...
* Cognitive robotics
Cognitive Robotics or Cognitive Technology is a subfield of robotics concerned with endowing a robot with intelligent behavior by providing it with a processing architecture that will allow it to learn and reason about how to behave in response t ...
* Evolutionary robotics Evolutionary robotics is an embodied approach to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in which robots are automatically designed using Darwinian principles of natural selection. The design of a robot, or a subsystem of a robot such as a neural controller, ...
References
External links
IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robot Learning (official IEEE website)
IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robot Learning (TC members website)
Robot Learning at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the Technical University Darmstadt
Robot Learning at the Computational Learning and Motor Control lab
Humanoid Robot Learning at the Advanced Telecommunication Research Center (ATR)
Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory at EPFL (LASA)
at th
of Juergen Schmidhuber at IDSIA
The Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research ( it, Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale, italic=no, IDSIA) is a research institution based in Lugano, in Canton Ticino in southern Switzerland. It was found ...
and Technical University of Munich
The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences.
Establis ...
The Humanoid Project
Peter Nordin
Peter Nordin (August 9, 1965 – October 12, 2020) was a Swedish computer scientist, entrepreneur and author who has contributed to artificial intelligence, automatic programming, machine learning, and evolutionary robotics.
Studies and e ...
, Chalmers University of Technology
Chalmers University of Technology ( sv, Chalmers tekniska högskola, often shortened to Chalmers) is a Swedish university located in Gothenburg that conducts research and education in technology and natural sciences at a high international level ...
Inria and Ensta ParisTech FLOWERS team, France
Autonomous lifelong learning in developmental robotics
CITEC at University of Bielefeld, Germany
Department of Adaptive Machine Systems, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Japan
The Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...
Amherst, USA
Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems
Plymouth University
Plymouth, United Kingdom
Robot Learning Lab
at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...
Project Learning Humanoid Robots
at University of Bonn
The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...
Skilligent Robot Learning and Behavior Coordination System (commercial product)
Robot Learning class
at Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
Robot Learning and Interaction Lab
at Italian Institute of Technology
The Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) (in English: Italian Institute of Technology) is a scientific research centre based in Genoa (Italy, EU).
Its main goal is the advancement of science, in Italy and worldwide, through projects and discoveri ...
Reinforcement learning for robotics
at Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Delft), also known as TU Delft, is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022 it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among ...
{{Robotics
Learning
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, value (personal and cultural), values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machine learning, machines ...
Machine learning
Learning