Guided Learning from Demonstration for Robust Transferability

TL;DR

This paper presents a guided learning from demonstration approach using a GUI and motion planning to ensure demonstrations are within reproducible motion spaces, improving success rates in robotic tasks.

Contribution

Introducing a novel guided LfD paradigm that prevents non-reproducible demonstrations using a motion planning-based GUI interface.

Findings

Guided demonstrations significantly improve task success rates.

Method validated on UR5 and Sawyer robotic systems.

User study shows increased success with guidance.

Abstract

Learning from demonstration (LfD) has the potential to greatly increase the applicability of robotic manipulators in modern industrial applications. Recent progress in LfD methods have put more emphasis in learning robustness than in guiding the demonstration itself in order to improve robustness. The latter is particularly important to consider when the target system reproducing the motion is structurally different to the demonstration system, as some demonstrated motions may not be reproducible. In light of this, this paper introduces a new guided learning from demonstration paradigm where an interactive graphical user interface (GUI) guides the user during demonstration, preventing them from demonstrating non-reproducible motions. The key aspect of our approach is determining the space of reproducible motions based on a motion planning framework which finds regions in the task space where trajectories are guaranteed to be of bounded length. We evaluate our method on two different setups with a six-degree-of-freedom (DOF) UR5 as the target system. First our method is validated using a seven-DOF Sawyer as the demonstration system. Then an extensive user study is carried out where several participants are asked to demonstrate, with and without guidance, a mock weld task using a hand held tool tracked by a VICON system. With guidance users were able to always carry out the task successfully in comparison to only 44% of the time without guidance.