{"title":"Teaching robots the use of human tools from demonstration with non-dexterous end-effectors","authors":"Wenbin Li, Mario Fritz","doi":"10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363586","url":null,"abstract":"Commercial, affordable and general-purpose robots like the PR-2, Baxter and UBR-1 robots can take over a wide range of tasks or assist human workers in a mixed human-robot environment. However, end-effectors on these robots are usually restricted to low-cost, non-dexterous grippers which constrains the application scenarios. We aim at increasing their range by teaching such robots the use of human tools by demonstration. We present a novel and compact model for the use of human tools and propose a dual-gripper strategy in replacement of the much less widely deployed dexterous hand for tool manipulation. Especially, we propose a hierarchical architecture to embed tool use in a learning from demonstration framework, learning temporal order for dual-arm coordination at higher level and Dynamic Movement Primitives at lower level for a multi-step execution. The approach is demonstrated and evaluated on a Baxter research robot for three human tools.","PeriodicalId":417686,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114974833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Differential dynamic programming with temporally decomposed dynamics","authors":"Akihiko Yamaguchi, C. Atkeson","doi":"10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363430","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363430","url":null,"abstract":"We explore a temporal decomposition of dynamics in order to enhance policy learning with unknown dynamics. There are model-free methods and model-based methods for policy learning with unknown dynamics, but both approaches have problems: in general, model-free methods have less generalization ability, while model-based methods are often limited by the assumed model structure or need to gather many samples to make models. We consider a temporal decomposition of dynamics to make learning models easier. To obtain a policy, we apply differential dynamic programming (DDP). A feature of our method is that we consider decomposed dynamics even when there is no action to be taken, which allows us to decompose dynamics more flexibly. Consequently learned dynamics become more accurate. Our DDP is a first-order gradient descent algorithm with a stochastic evaluation function. In DDP with learned models, typically there are many local maxima. In order to avoid them, we consider multiple criteria evaluation functions. In addition to the stochastic evaluation function, we use a reference value function. This method was verified with pouring simulation experiments where we created complicated dynamics. The results show that we can optimize actions with DDP while learning dynamics models.","PeriodicalId":417686,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)","volume":"85 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116322958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
C. Brasseur, Alexander Sherikov, C. Collette, Dimitar Dimitrov, Pierre-Brice Wieber
{"title":"A robust linear MPC approach to online generation of 3D biped walking motion","authors":"C. Brasseur, Alexander Sherikov, C. Collette, Dimitar Dimitrov, Pierre-Brice Wieber","doi":"10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363423","url":null,"abstract":"A crucial part in biped walking motion generation is to ensure dynamic feasibility, which takes the form of a nonlinear constraint in the general case. Our proposition is to bound the nonlinear part of the dynamic feasibility constraint between some properly chosen extreme values. Making sure that this constraint is satisfied for the extreme values guarantees its satisfaction for all possible values in between. This follows a classical approach from robust nonlinear control theory, which is to consider a nonlinear dynamical system as a specific selection of a time-invariant Linear Differential Inclusion. As a result, dynamic feasibility can be imposed by using only linear constraints, which can be included in an efficient linear MPC scheme, to generate 3D walking motions online. Our simulation results show two major achievements: 1) walking motions over uneven ground such as stairs can be generated online, with guaranteed kinematic and dynamic feasibility, 2) walking on flat ground is significantly improved, with a 3D motion of the CoM closely resembling the one observed in humans.","PeriodicalId":417686,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)","volume":"2674 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121934410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"IK-Map: An enhanced workspace representation to support inverse kinematics solvers","authors":"N. Vahrenkamp, D. Muth, P. Kaiser, T. Asfour","doi":"10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363443","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363443","url":null,"abstract":"We present an approach to improve the performance of general purpose inverse kinematics (IK) solvers which are based on iterative gradient descent algorithms. The proposed IK-Map is used to represent the whole workspace of the manipulator through a voxelized data structure, similar to existing approaches, e.g. reachability or capability maps. We extend the reachability map approach by additionally storing reference IK solutions, which can be used to seed iterative IK solvers during online processing. This information can be used to limit the effect of well-known issues with local optimization schemes based on gradient decent methods, such as local minima or constraint violation. We evaluate the approach with a simulated model of ARMAR-4, showing that classical generic Jacobian-based IK solvers can be improved in terms of success rate, performance, and quality of the resulting IK solutions.","PeriodicalId":417686,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117130609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Schuy, T. Mielke, M. Steinhausen, P. Beckerle, S. Rinderknecht
{"title":"Design & evaluation of a sensor minimal gait phase and situation detection Algorithm of Human Walking","authors":"J. Schuy, T. Mielke, M. Steinhausen, P. Beckerle, S. Rinderknecht","doi":"10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363517","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents the design and evaluation of gait detection algorithm based on one IMU placed on the shank. The algorithm is based on adaptive thresholds by artificial neural network and fuzzy logic to identify gait phase and situation for real-time applications like micro-processed prosthesis. Offline evaluation with fifteen able-bodied subjects and two transtibial amputees shows high detection rates of 98 % for distinguishing stance from swing phase as well as 93.6 % between straight and turning gait situation with global parameters.","PeriodicalId":417686,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117183152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Emmanouil Spyrakos-Papastavridis, Navvab Kashiri, Jinoh Lee, N. Tsagarakis, D. Caldwell
{"title":"Online impedance parameter tuning for compliant biped balancing","authors":"Emmanouil Spyrakos-Papastavridis, Navvab Kashiri, Jinoh Lee, N. Tsagarakis, D. Caldwell","doi":"10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363553","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363553","url":null,"abstract":"This paper describes a technique aimed at the online active impedance regulation of compliant humanoid robots, for the purpose of maintaining balance. The presence of passive elastic elements in their drives leads to under-actuation, thereby rendering the control of compliant robots a rather intricate task. Consequently, the impedance regulation procedure proposed in this paper accounts for these elastic elements. In order to acquire an indication of the robot's state of balance in an online fashion, an energy (Lyapunov) function is introduced, whose sign then allows one to determine whether the robot is converging to or diverging from, a desired equilibrium position. This function's derivative reveals the energy-injecting nature of the active stiffness regulation, while it attests to the fact that active damping regulation has no effect on the system's stability properties. Furthermore, the notion of the velocity margin is described as a velocity beyond which the system might lose its balance, or below which it will be guaranteed to remain stable. As a result, the impedance optimization procedure's functionality relies upon the use of bounds that have been defined based on the energy function's derivative, in addition to the velocity margin. A series of experiments carried out using the COmpliant huMANoid (COMAN), demonstrates the superior balancing results acquired when using the proposed scheme, as compared to utilizing controllers possessing constant impedance parameters.","PeriodicalId":417686,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125836436","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
K. Harada, Tokuo Tsuji, K. Kikuchi, K. Nagata, H. Onda, Y. Kawai
{"title":"Base position planning for dual-arm mobile manipulators performing a sequence of pick-and-place tasks","authors":"K. Harada, Tokuo Tsuji, K. Kikuchi, K. Nagata, H. Onda, Y. Kawai","doi":"10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363551","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363551","url":null,"abstract":"In this study, we plan a sequence of the base position for dual-arm mobile manipulators performing multiple pick-and-place tasks. By using our proposed method, the robot can selectively use either the right or the left hand to pick up an object and can minimize the sequence size of the base position needed to performed the given task. We first formulate a quadratic programming (QP) problem to solve the inverse kinematics by considering robot collision. We then formulate a region on the base position where a robot can pick up an object placed anywhere in a box. A sequence of base positions is then obtained by combining the branch and bound (BB) and simulated annealing (SA) methods. We present the numerical calculation results to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.","PeriodicalId":417686,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129833931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Simon Leischnig, Stefan Luettgen, Oliver Kroemer, Jan Peters
{"title":"A comparison of contact distribution representations for learning to predict object interactions","authors":"Simon Leischnig, Stefan Luettgen, Oliver Kroemer, Jan Peters","doi":"10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363435","url":null,"abstract":"Different contacts between objects afford different interactions between them. For example, while contacts below an object can provide support, contacts on opposing sides can be used for pinching. Hence, a robot can learn to predict which interactions are currently afforded based on the set of contacts. However, representing sets of contacts is not trivial, as the number of contacts is not fixed nor are the contacts ordered. In this paper, we compare different methods for representing contacts, including bag-of-features, probability product kernels, and random forests. These approaches model the distribution over the contacts without relying on task-specific features. The methods were evaluated on both simulated grasping data, as well as real robot grasps. The random forest and the normalized expected likelihood kernel approaches achieved the highest accuracies for the simulated experiments. In the case of the real robot data, the more robust exponential χ2 and Bhattacharyya kernels achieved higher accuracies.","PeriodicalId":417686,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130210432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MuJoCo HAPTIX: A virtual reality system for hand manipulation","authors":"Vikash Kumar, E. Todorov","doi":"10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363441","url":null,"abstract":"Data-driven methods have lead to advances in multiple fields including robotics. These methods however have had limited impact on dexterous hand manipulation, partly due to lack of rich and physically-consistent dataset as well as technology able to collect them. To fill this gap, we developed a virtual reality system combining real-time motion capture, physics simulation and stereoscopic visualization. The system enables a user wearing a CyberGlove to \"reach-in\" the simulation, and manipulate virtual objects through contacts with a tele-operated virtual hand. The system is evaluated on a subset of tasks in the Southampton Hand Assessment Procedure - which is a clinically validated test of hand function. The system is also being used by performer teams in the DARPA Hand Proprioception & Touch Interfaces program to develop neural control interfaces in simulation. The software is freely available at www.mujoco.org.","PeriodicalId":417686,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130498605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yu Ohara, Masaki Murooka, Ryohei Ueda, Shunichi Nozawa, Youhei Kakiuchi, K. Okada, M. Inaba
{"title":"Configurable autonomy applicable to humanoid manipulation in unstructured and communication-limited environment","authors":"Yu Ohara, Masaki Murooka, Ryohei Ueda, Shunichi Nozawa, Youhei Kakiuchi, K. Okada, M. Inaba","doi":"10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363577","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2015.7363577","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, humanoids have been expected to play an important part in disaster response due to safety concerns. For disaster response, humanoids should do tasks in unknown and unstructured environments possibly with limited communications. Firstly this paper presents a robot operating system in which complementary integration of autonomous and manual functions is achieved. In our system operator can change the level of automation depending on the situation: operator can modify the result of recognition in 3D Viewer, and can transfer from auto motion generating mode to manual control mode at any time with inheriting some motion parameters. Secondly for the purpose of overcoming communication-limit in disaster site, we propose the method of generating robot motion with little communication between operator and robot. Even when communication is limited, our System can convey necessary information to user by processing past data, always transferring small important data, and showing future motion plans.","PeriodicalId":417686,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE-RAS 15th International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128764669","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}