Learning perceptual coupling for motor primitives

—Dynamic system-based motor primitives [1] have enabled robots to learn complex tasks ranging from Tennisswings to locomotion. However, to date there have been only few extensions which have incorporated perceptual coupling to variables of external focus, and, furthermore, these modifications have relied upon handcrafted solutions. Humans learn how to couple their movement primitives with external variables. Clearly, such a solution is needed in robotics. In this paper, we propose an augmented version of the dynamic systems motor primitives which incorporates perceptual coupling to an external variable. The resulting perceptually driven motor primitives include the previous primitives as a special case and can inherit some of their interesting properties. We show that these motor primitives can perform complex tasks such a Ball-ina-Cup or Kendama task even with large variances in the initial conditions where a skilled human player would be challenged. For doing so, we initialize the...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: IROS
• Authors: Jens Kober, Betty J. Mohler, Jan Peters
• Keywords: IROS 2008, Motor Primitives, Perceptual Coupling, Robotics, System-based Motor Primitives