We present and evaluate an approach for human-in-the-loop specification of shape reconstruction with annotations for basic robot-object interactions. Our method is based on the idea of model annotation: the addition of simple cues to an underlying object model to specify shape and delineate a simple task. The goal is to explore reducing the complexity of CAD-like interfaces so that novice users can quickly recover an object's shape and describe a manipulation task that is then carried out by a robot. The object modeling and interaction annotation capabilities are tested with a user study and compared against results obtained using existing approaches. The approach has been analyzed using a variety of shape comparison, grasping, and manipulation metrics, and tested with the PR2 robot platform, where it was shown to be successful.
Learning from Demonstration (LfD) offers an alternative to the active addition of annotations in post-processing. In LfD, the parameters of actuation are implicitly refined through the observation of examples provided by humans. This happens because under this strategy, perception-action systems are built specifically to follow human actions and replicate them within their own circumstances (like different kinematic structures or safety constraints). See @cite_87 for a thorough review.
@cite_87
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Many advanced Learning from Demonstration (LfD) methods consider the decomposition of complex, real-world tasks into simpler sub-tasks. By reusing the corresponding sub-policies within and between tasks, they provide training data for each policy from different high-level tasks and compose them to perform novel ones. Existing approaches to modular LfD focus either on learning a single high-level task or depend on domain knowledge and temporal segmentation. In contrast, we propose a weakly supervised, domain-agnostic approach based on task sketches, which include only the sequence of sub-tasks performed in each demonstration. Our approach simultaneously aligns the sketches with the observed demonstrations and learns the required sub-policies. This improves generalisation in comparison to separate optimisation procedures. We evaluate the approach on multiple domains, including a simulated 3D robot arm control task using purely image-based observations. The results show that our approach performs commensurately with fully supervised approaches, while requiring significantly less annotation effort.