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An important question in imitation learning is how to generalize a learned motion to novel situations. The motion generalization depends on a set of features which can be represented as feature vectors spanning a feature space, called query space. The purpose of generalization is to find a mapping from this query space to the motion primitive space (MP space). In this paper, we address the problem...
Robotic coverage path planning describes the problem of determining a configuration space trajectory for successively covering a specified workspace target area with the robot's end-effector. Performing coverage path planning for mobile robots further requires solving the problem of robot placement, i.e. determining of suitable robot base positions to perform the task. Finding an optimal solution...
To increase the autonomy of humanoid robots, the visual perception must support the efficient collection and interpretation of visual scene cues by providing task-dependent information. Active vision systems allow to extend the observable workspace by employing active gaze control, i.e. by shifting the gaze to relevant areas in the scene. When moving the eyes, stabilization of the camera images is...
We present highly integrated sensor-actuator-controller units (SAC units), addressing the increasing need for easy to use components in the design of modern high-performance robotic systems. Following strict design principles and an electro-mechanical co-design from the beginning on, our development resulted in highly integrated SAC units. Each SAC unit includes a motor, a gear unit, an IMU, sensors...
Kinematic compatibility is of paramount importance in wearable robotic and exoskeleton design. Misalignments between exoskeletons and anatomical joints of the human body result in interaction forces which make wearing the exoskeleton uncomfortable and even dangerous for the human. In this paper we present a kinematically compatible design of an exoskeleton hip to reduce kinematic incompatibilities,...
We present a novel unsupervised framework, which links continuous visual features and symbolic textual descriptions of manipulation activity videos. First, we extract the semantic representation of visually observed manipulations by applying a bottom-up approach to the continuous image streams. We then employ a rule-based reasoning to link visual and linguistic inputs. The proposed framework allows...
This paper presents the design of the KIT Dual Arm System, which consists of two high-performance, humanoid robot arms. Based on human arm kinematics, each arm has 8 degrees of freedom (DOF) including a clavicle joint of the inner shoulder. In comparison to classical 7 DOF robot arms, the incorporation of the clavicle joint results in a larger workspace and an increased dexterity in bimanual tasks...
Humanoid robots are expected to be able to communicate with humans using physical interaction, including hug, which is a common gesture of affection. In order to achieve that, their physical embodiment has to be carefully planned, as a user-friendly design will facilitate interaction and minimise repulsion. In this paper, we investigate the effect of manipulating the visual/tactile appearance of a...
Dynamic movement primitives prove to be a useful and effective way to represent an action of a given agent. However, current DMP formulations do not take the interaction among multiple agents into the consideration. We propose a new formulation called Coordinate Change Dynamic Movement Primitive (CC-DMP), which explicitly represents the relationship between leader and follower in multi-agent collaborative...
We present an approach for determining suitable locations for human-robot interaction tasks. Therefore, we introduce the task specific Interaction Workspace as a representation of the workspace that can be accessed by both agents, i.e. the robot and the human. We show how the Interaction Workspace can be efficiently determined for a specific situation by making use of precomputed workspace representations...
This paper introduces a novel sensor concept for surface exploration in robotic applications. We present an IMU-based haptic sensor that accurately estimates the orientation of contact points. One of the biggest advantages of our proposed sensor concept is the extraction of absolute surface orientation without being affected by inaccuracies in the forward kinematics. Conventional sensors require additional...
Autonomous grasping and manipulation of unknown objects is a central skill for humanoid robots. This is particularly challenging, as shape information needs to be obtained from sensory data which is often noisy and incomplete. However, object shape information is usually a key prerequisite for grasp and manipulation planning and thus needs to be estimated even if the available sensor data is limited...
Task execution by a coordinated team of robots that feature different skills and competencies, offers certain advantages over a single robot. To better coordinate individual actions, effective planners are necessary to consider the time that agents devote to the completion of partial activities, the different skills that agents may have and the qualitative differences in action implementation by different...
In this work we present the concept of a pilot interface to control a humanoid robot on an abstract level in unknown environments. The environment is perceived with a stereo camera system and then simplified into a set of environmental primitives. Based on these primitives the interface proposes affordances to the pilot. Affordances are represented as certainty functions over the space of end-effector...
This paper contributes to semantic representation of human demonstrated actions for robot execution of time constrained tasks. We propose a semantic action encoding method based on interactions between the subject and objects in the scene. Our semantic framework is enriched with a descriptive spatial reasoning method which leads to accurate segmentation and recognition of unique action primitives...
Full-size humanoid robots are traditionally controlled with the Zero Moment Point (ZMP)-paradigm and simplified dynamics, a well established method which can be applied to balancing, walking, and whole-body manipulation tasks. For pure walking control, approaches like pattern generators and reflexes are employed, often on optimized hardware. Both controller groups are developed on different platforms...
In this work, we present a part-based grasp planning approach that is capable of generating grasps that are applicable to multiple familiar objects. We show how object models can be decomposed according to their shape and local volumetric information. The resulting object parts are labeled with semantic information and used for generating robotic grasping information. We investigate how the transfer...
Dynamic movement primitives prove to be a useful and effective way to represent a movement of a given agent. However, the original DMP formulation does not take the interaction among multiple agents into the consideration. Thus, many researchers focus on the development of a coupling term for the underlying dynamical system and its associated learning strategies. The result is highly dependent on...
We present a novel approach for generating sequences of whole-body poses with multi-contacts for humanoid robots, which is inspired by techniques from natural language processing. To this end, we propose a probabilistic n-gram language model learned from observation of human locomotion tasks. Human motion data is automatically segmented according to detected contacts of the body with the environment...
We propose a formalism for the hierarchical representation of affordances. Starting with a perceived model of the environment consisting of geometric primitives like planes or cylinders, we define a hierarchical system for affordance extraction whose foundation are elementary power grasp affordances. Higher-level affordances, e.g. bimanual affordances, result from combining lower-level affordances...
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