Al-Yacoub Ali, Zhao Yuchen, Lohse Niels, Goh Mey, Kinnell Peter, Ferreira Pedro, Hubbard Ella-Mae
Intelligent Automation Centre, Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom.
Beijing Ewaybot Technology LLC, Beijing, China.
Front Robot AI. 2019 Oct 17;6:99. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2019.00099. eCollection 2019.
Imitation learning is gaining more attention because it enables robots to learn skills from human demonstrations. One of the major industrial activities that can benefit from imitation learning is the learning of new assembly processes. An essential characteristic of an assembly skill is its different contact states (CS). They determine how to adjust movements in order to perform the assembly task successfully. Humans can recognize CSs through haptic feedback. They execute complex assembly tasks accordingly. Hence, CSs are generally recognized using force and torque information. This process is not straightforward due to the variations in assembly tasks, signal noise and ambiguity in interpreting force/torque (F/T) information. In this research, an investigation has been conducted to recognize the CSs during an assembly process with a geometrical variation on the mating parts. The F/T data collected from several human trials were pre-processed, segmented and represented as symbols. Those symbols were used to train a probabilistic model. Then, the trained model was validated using unseen datasets. The primary goal of the proposed approach aims to improve recognition accuracy and reduce the computational effort by employing symbolic and probabilistic approaches. The model successfully recognized CS based only on force information. This shows that such models can assist in imitation learning.
模仿学习正受到越来越多的关注,因为它能使机器人从人类示范中学习技能。能从模仿学习中受益的主要工业活动之一是新装配工艺的学习。装配技能的一个基本特征是其不同的接触状态(CS)。它们决定了如何调整动作以便成功执行装配任务。人类可以通过触觉反馈识别接触状态。他们据此执行复杂的装配任务。因此,通常使用力和扭矩信息来识别接触状态。由于装配任务的变化、信号噪声以及在解释力/扭矩(F/T)信息时的模糊性,这个过程并不简单。在这项研究中,已经进行了一项调查,以识别在配合零件存在几何变化的装配过程中的接触状态。从几次人类试验中收集的F/T数据经过预处理、分段并表示为符号。这些符号被用来训练一个概率模型。然后,使用未见过的数据集对训练好的模型进行验证。所提出方法的主要目标旨在通过采用符号和概率方法提高识别准确率并减少计算量。该模型仅基于力信息就成功识别了接触状态。这表明这样的模型可以协助模仿学习。