Abstract
Programming a humanoid robot to perform an action that takes into account the robot’s complex dynamics is a challenging problem. Traditional approaches typically require highly accurate prior knowledge of the robot’s dynamics and the environment in order to devise complex control algorithms for generating a stable dynamic motion. Training using human motion capture (mocap) data is an intuitive and flexible approach to programming a robot but direct usage of kinematic data from mocap usually results in dynamically unstable motion. Furthermore, optimization using mocap data in the high-dimensional full-body joint-space of a humanoid is typically intractable. In this chapter, we purposes a new model-free approach to tractable imitation-based learning in humanoids by using eigenposes.
The proposed framework is depicted in Fig. 1. A motion capture system transforms the Cartesian positions of markers attached to the human body to joint angles based on kinematic relationships between the human and robot bodies. Then, linear PCA is used to create eigenpose data, which are representation of whole-body posture information in a compact low-dimensional subspace. Optimization of whole-body robot dynamics to match human motion is performed in the low dimensional subspace by using eigenposes. In particular, sensory feedback data are recorded from the robot during motion and a causal relationship between eigenpose actions and the expected sensory feedback is learned. This learned sensory-motor mapping allows humanoid motion dynamics to be optimized. An inverse mapping that maps optimized eigenpose data from the low-dimensional subspace back to the original joint space is then used to generate motion on the robot. We present several results demonstrating that the proposed approach allows a humanoid robot to learn to walk based solely on human motion capture without the need for a detailed physics-based model of the robot.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2003, Taipei, Taiwan. IEEE, Los Alamitos (2003)
Billard, A.: Imitation: a means to enhance learning of a synthetic protolanguage in autonomous robots, pp. 281–310 (2002)
Chalodhorn, R., MacDorman, K.F., Asada, M.: An algorithm that recognizes and reproduces distinct types of humanoid motion based on periodically-constrained nonlinear pca. In: Nardi, D., Riedmiller, M., Sammut, C., Santos-Victor, J. (eds.) RoboCup 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3276, pp. 370–380. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Dana Kulic Dongheui Lee, C.O., Nakamura, Y.: Incremental learning of full body motion primitives for humanoid robots. In: IEEE International Conference on Humanoid Robots, pp. 326–332 (2008)
Demiris, J., Hayes, G.: A robot controller using learning by imitation. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Intelligent Robotic Systems, Grenoble, France (1994)
Grimes, D.B., Chalodhorn, R., Rao, R.P.N.: Dynamic imitation in a humanoid robot through nonparametric probabilistic inference. In: Sukhatme, G.S., Schaal, S., Burgard, W., Fox, D. (eds.) Robotics: Science and Systems. The MIT Press, Cambridge (2006)
Grochow, K., Martin, S.L., Hertzmann, A., Popovic, Z.: Style-based inverse kinematics. ACM Trans. Graph. 23(3), 522–531 (2004)
Ijspeert, A.J., Nakanishi, J., Schaal, S.: Trajectory formation for imitation with nonlinear dynamical systems. In: Proceeding of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 752–757 (2001)
Inamura, T., Toshima, I., Nakamura, Y.: Acquisition and embodiment of motion elements in closed mimesis loop. In: ICRA, pp. 1539–1544. IEEE, Los Alamitos (2002)
Kajita, S., Kanehiro, F., Kaneko, K., Fujiwara, K., Harada, K., Yokoi, K., Hirukawa, H.: Biped walking pattern generation by using preview control of zero-moment point. In: ICRA [1], pp. 1620–1626
Kajita, S., Matsumoto, O., Saigo, M.: Real-time 3d walking pattern generation for a biped robot with telescopic legs. In: ICRA, pp. 2299–2306. IEEE, Los Alamitos (2001)
Kajita, S., Nagasaki, T., Kaneko, K., Yokoi, K., Tanie, K.: A running controller of humanoid biped hrp-2lr. In: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2005, Barcelona, Spain, April 18-22, pp. 616–622 (2005)
Kramer, M.A.: Nonlinear principal component analysis using autoassociative neural networks. Journal of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers 37(2), 233–243 (1991)
Michel, O.: Webots: Symbiosis between virtual and real mobile robots. In: Heudin, J.-C. (ed.) VW 1998. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1434, pp. 254–263. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)
Morimoto, J., Hyon, S.H., Atkeson, C.G., Cheng, G.: Low-dimensional feature extraction for humanoid locomotion using kernel dimension reduction. In: 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2008, Pasadena, California, USA, May 19-23, pp. 2711–2716 (2008)
Rao, R.P.N., Shon, A.P., Meltzoff, A.N.: A Bayesian model of imitation in infants and robots. In: Nehaniv, C.L., Dautenhahn, K. (eds.) Imitation and Social Learning in Robots, Humans and Animals: Behavioural, Social and Communicative Dimensions. Cambridge University Press, UK (2007)
Sobotka, M., Wollherr, D., Buss, M.: A jacobian method for online modification of precalculated gait trajectories. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots, Catania, Italy, pp. 435–442 (2003)
Sutton, R., Barto, A.: Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction. MIT Press, Cambridge (1998)
Tatani, K., Nakamura, Y.: Dimensionality reduction and reproduction with hierarchical nlpca neural networks-extracting common space of multiple humanoid motion patterns. In: ICRA [1], pp. 1927–1932
Vukobratović, M., Yu, S.: On the stability of anthropomorphic systems. Mathematical Biosciences 15, 1–37 (1972)
Wang, J., Fleet, D., Hertzmann, A.: Gaussian process dynamical models. In: Weiss, Y., Schölkopf, B., Platt, J. (eds.) Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, vol. 18, pp. 1441–1448. MIT Press, Cambridge (2006)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chalodhorn, R., Rao, R.P.N. (2010). Learning to Imitate Human Actions through Eigenposes. In: Sigaud, O., Peters, J. (eds) From Motor Learning to Interaction Learning in Robots. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 264. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-05181-4_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-05181-4_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-05180-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-05181-4
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)