In collaborative tasks, people rely both on verbal and non-verbal cues simultaneously to communicate with each other. For human-robot interaction to run smoothly and naturally, a robot should be equipped with the ability to robustly disambiguate referring expressions. In this work, we propose a model that can disambiguate multimodal fetching requests using modalities such as head movements, hand gestures, and speech. We analysed the acquired data from mixed reality experiments and formulated a hypothesis that modelling temporal dependencies of events in these three modalities increases the model’s predictive power. We evaluated our model on a Bayesian framework to interpret referring expressions with and without exploiting the temporal prior.

Modeling of physical human-robot collaborations is generally a challenging problem due to the unpredictive nature of human behavior. To address this issue, we present a data-efficient reinforcement learning framework which enables a robot to learn how to collaborate with a human partner. The robot learns the task from its own sensorimotor experiences in an unsupervised manner. The uncertainty in the interaction is modeled using Gaussian processes (GP) to implement a forward model and an actionvalue function. Optimal action selection given the uncertain GP model is ensured by Bayesian optimization. We apply the framework to a scenario in which a human and a PR2 robot jointly control the ball position on a plank based on vision and force/torque data. Our experimental results show the suitability of the proposed method in terms of fast and data-efficient model learning, optimal action selection under uncertainty and equal role sharing between the partners.

We present a general framework to autonomously achieve the task of finding a sequence of actions that result in a desired state. Autonomy is acquired by learning sensorimotor patterns of a robot, while it is interacting with its environment. Gaussian processes (GP) with automatic relevance determination are used to learn the sensorimotor mapping. In this way, relevant sensory and motor components can be systematically found in high-dimensional sensory and motor spaces. We propose an incremental GP learning strategy, which discerns between situations, when an update or an adaptation must be implemented. The Rapidly exploring Random Tree (RRT∗) algorithm is exploited to enable long-term planning and generating a sequence of states that lead to a given goal; while a gradient-based search finds the optimum action to steer to a neighbouring state in a single time step. Our experimental results prove the suitability of the proposed framework to learn a joint space controller with high data dimensions (10×15). It demonstrates short training phase (less than 12 seconds), real-time performance and rapid adaptations capabilities.

This paper presents a sensorimotor contingencies (SMC) based method to fully autonomously learn to perform hand-eye coordination. We divide the task into two visuomotor subtasks, visual fixation and reaching, and implement these on a PR2 robot assuming no prior information on its kinematic model. Our contributions are three-fold: i) grounding a robot in the environment by exploiting SMCs in the action planning system, which eliminates the need for prior knowledge of the kinematic or dynamic models of the robot; ii) using a forward model to search for proper actions to solve the task by minimizing a cost function, instead of training a separate inverse model, to speed up training; iii) encoding 3D spatial positions of a target object based on the robot’s joint positions, thus avoiding calibration with respect to an external coordinate system. The method is capable of learning the task of hand-eye coordination from scratch by less than 20 sensory-motor pairs that are iteratively generated at real-time speed. In order to examine the robustness of the method while dealing with nonlinear image distortions, we apply a so-called retinal mapping image deformation to the input images. Experimental results show the successfulness of the method even under considerable image deformations.

In this paper, we propose an approach for vision-based pose estimation of a robot hand or full-body pose. The method is based on virtual visual servoing using a CAD model of the robot and it combines 2-D image features with depth features. The method can be applied to estimate either the pose of a robot hand or pose of the whole body given that its joint configuration is known. We present experimental results that show the performance of the approach as demonstrated on both a mobile humanoid robot and a stationary manipulator.

Accurate robot camera calibration is a requirement for vision guided robots to perform precision assembly tasks. In this paper, we address the problem of doing intrinsic camera and hand-eye calibration on a robot vision system using a single point marker. This removes the need for using bulky special purpose calibration objects, and also facilitates on line accuracy checking and re-calibration when needed, without altering the robots production environment. The proposed solution provides a calibration routine that produces high quality results on par with the robot accuracy and completes a calibration in 3 minutes without need of manual intervention. We also present a method for automatic testing of camera calibration accuracy. Results from experimental verification on the dual arm concept robot FRIDA are presented.

This article presents a unified framework for detecting, segmenting and tracking unknown objects in everyday scenes, allowing for inspection of object hypotheses during interaction over time. A heterogeneous scene representation is proposed, with background regions modeled as a combinations of planar surfaces and uniform clutter, and foreground objects as 3D ellipsoids. Recent energy minimization methods based on loopy belief propagation, tree-reweighted message passing and graph cuts are studied for the purpose of multi-object segmentation and benchmarked in terms of segmentation quality, as well as computational speed and how easily methods can be adapted for parallel processing. One conclusion is that the choice of energy minimization method is less important than the way scenes are modeled. Proximities are more valuable for segmentation than similarity in colors, while the benefit of 3D information is limited. It is also shown through practical experiments that, with implementations on GPUs, multi-object segmentation and tracking using state-of-art MRF inference methods is feasible, despite the computational costs typically associated with such methods.

We present a probabilistic learning framework to form object hypotheses through interaction with the environment. A robot learns how to manipulate objects through pushing actions to identify how many objects are present in the scene. We use a segmentation system that initializes object hypotheses based on RGBD data and adopt a reinforcement approach to learn the relations between pushing actions and their effects on object segmentations. Trained models are used to generate actions that result in minimum number of pushes on object groups, until either object separation events are observed or it is ensured that there is only one object acted on. We provide baseline experiments that show that a policy based on reinforcement learning for action selection results in fewer pushes, than if pushing actions were selected randomly.

Predicting the sensory consequences of an agent's own actions is considered an important skill for intelligent behavior. In terms of vision, so-called visual forward models can be applied to learn such predictions. This is no trivial task given the high-dimensionality of sensory data and complex action spaces. In this work, we propose to learn the visual consequences of changes in pan and tilt of a robotic head using a visual forward model based on Gaussian processes and SURF correspondences. This is done without any assumptions on the kinematics of the system or requirements on calibration. The proposed method is compared to an earlier work using accumulator-based correspondences and Radial Basis function networks. We also show the feasibility of the proposed method for detection of independent motion using a moving camera system. By comparing the predicted and actual captured images, image motion due to the robot's own actions and motion caused by moving external objects can be distinguished. Results show the proposed method to be preferable from the earlier method in terms of both prediction errors and ability to detect independent motion.