Publications | Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

In this paper, we address some of the challenges that arise as model-mediated teleoperation is applied to systems with multiple degrees of freedom and multiple sensors. Specifically we use a system with position, force, and vision sensors to explore an environment geometry in two degrees of freedom. The inclusion of vision is proposed to alleviate the difficulties of estimating an increasing number of environment properties. Vision can furthermore increase the predictive nature of model-mediated teleoperation, by effectively predicting touch feedback before the slave is even in contact with the environment. We focus on the case of estimating the location and orientation of a local surface patch at the contact point between the slave and the environment. We describe the various information sources with their respective limitations and create a combined model estimator as part of a multi-d.o.f. model-mediated controller. An experiment demonstrates the feasibility and benefits of utilizing vision sensors in teleoperation.

DOI [BibTex]

am Willaert, B., Bohg, J., Van Brussel, H., Niemeyer, G. Towards Multi-DOF model mediated teleoperation: Using vision to augment feedback In IEEE International Workshop on Haptic Audio Visual Environments and Games (HAVE), pages: 25-31, October 2012 (inproceedings)

DOI [BibTex]

Failure Recovery with Shared Autonomy

Sankaran, B., Pitzer, B., Osentoski, S.

In International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, October 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Building robots capable of long term autonomy has been a long standing goal of robotics research. Such systems must be capable of performing certain tasks with a high degree of robustness and repeatability. In the context of personal robotics, these tasks could range anywhere from retrieving items from a refrigerator, loading a dishwasher, to setting up a dinner table. Given the complexity of tasks there are a multitude of failure scenarios that the robot can encounter, irrespective of whether the environment is static or dynamic. For a robot to be successful in such situations, it would need to know how to recover from failures or when to ask a human for help. This paper, presents a novel shared autonomy behavioral executive to addresses these issues. We demonstrate how this executive combines generalized logic based recovery and human intervention to achieve continuous failure free operation. We tested the systems over 250 trials of two different use case experiments. Our current algorithm drastically reduced human intervention from 26% to 4% on the first experiment and 46% to 9% on the second experiment. This system provides a new dimension to robot autonomy, where robots can exhibit long term failure free operation with minimal human supervision. We also discuss how the system can be generalized.

link (url) [BibTex]

am Sankaran, B., Pitzer, B., Osentoski, S. Failure Recovery with Shared Autonomy In International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, October 2012 (inproceedings)

link (url) [BibTex]

Task-Based Grasp Adaptation on a Humanoid Robot

Bohg, J., Welke, K., León, B., Do, M., Song, D., Wohlkinger, W., Aldoma, A., Madry, M., Przybylski, M., Asfour, T., Marti, H., Kragic, D., Morales, A., Vincze, M.

In 10th IFAC Symposium on Robot Control, SyRoCo 2012, Dubrovnik, Croatia, September 5-7, 2012., pages: 779-786, September 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

In this paper, we present an approach towards autonomous grasping of objects according to their category and a given task. Recent advances in the field of object segmentation and categorization as well as task-based grasp inference have been leveraged by integrating them into one pipeline. This allows us to transfer task-specific grasp experience between objects of the same category. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated on the humanoid robot ARMAR-IIIa.

Video pdf DOI [BibTex]

am Bohg, J., Welke, K., León, B., Do, M., Song, D., Wohlkinger, W., Aldoma, A., Madry, M., Przybylski, M., Asfour, T., Marti, H., Kragic, D., Morales, A., Vincze, M. Task-Based Grasp Adaptation on a Humanoid Robot In 10th IFAC Symposium on Robot Control, SyRoCo 2012, Dubrovnik, Croatia, September 5-7, 2012., pages: 779-786, September 2012 (inproceedings)

Video pdf DOI [BibTex]

Quasi-Newton Methods: A New Direction

Hennig, P., Kiefel, M.

In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Machine Learning, pages: 25-32, ICML ’12, (Editors: John Langford and Joelle Pineau), Omnipress, New York, NY, USA, ICML, July 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Four decades after their invention, quasi- Newton methods are still state of the art in unconstrained numerical optimization. Although not usually interpreted thus, these are learning algorithms that fit a local quadratic approximation to the objective function. We show that many, including the most popular, quasi-Newton methods can be interpreted as approximations of Bayesian linear regression under varying prior assumptions. This new notion elucidates some shortcomings of classical algorithms, and lights the way to a novel nonparametric quasi-Newton method, which is able to make more efficient use of available information at computational cost similar to its predecessors.

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website+code pdf link (url) [BibTex]

ei ps pn Hennig, P., Kiefel, M. Quasi-Newton Methods: A New Direction In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Machine Learning, pages: 25-32, ICML ’12, (Editors: John Langford and Joelle Pineau), Omnipress, New York, NY, USA, ICML, July 2012 (inproceedings)

website+code pdf link (url) [BibTex]

Entropy Search for Information-Efficient Global Optimization

Hennig, P., Schuler, C.

Journal of Machine Learning Research, 13, pages: 1809-1837, -, June 2012 (article)

Abstract

Contemporary global optimization algorithms are based on local measures of utility, rather than a probability measure over location and value of the optimum. They thus attempt to collect low function values, not to learn about the optimum. The reason for the absence of probabilistic global optimizers is that the corresponding inference problem is intractable in several ways. This paper develops desiderata for probabilistic optimization algorithms, then presents a concrete algorithm which addresses each of the computational intractabilities with a sequence of approximations and explicitly adresses the decision problem of maximizing information gain from each evaluation.

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PDF Web Project Page [BibTex]

ei pn Hennig, P., Schuler, C. Entropy Search for Information-Efficient Global Optimization Journal of Machine Learning Research, 13, pages: 1809-1837, -, June 2012 (article)

PDF Web Project Page [BibTex]

Methods of making dry adhesives

Sitti, M., Murphy, M., Aksak, B.

June 2012, US Patent 8,206,631 (misc)

[BibTex]

pi Sitti, M., Murphy, M., Aksak, B. Methods of making dry adhesives June 2012, US Patent 8,206,631 (misc)

[BibTex]

Learning Tracking Control with Forward Models

Bócsi, B., Hennig, P., Csató, L., Peters, J.

In pages: 259 -264, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Performing task-space tracking control on redundant robot manipulators is a difficult problem. When the physical model of the robot is too complex or not available, standard methods fail and machine learning algorithms can have advantages. We propose an adaptive learning algorithm for tracking control of underactuated or non-rigid robots where the physical model of the robot is unavailable. The control method is based on the fact that forward models are relatively straightforward to learn and local inversions can be obtained via local optimization. We use sparse online Gaussian process inference to obtain a flexible probabilistic forward model and second order optimization to find the inverse mapping. Physical experiments indicate that this approach can outperform state-of-the-art tracking control algorithms in this context.

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PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei pn Bócsi, B., Hennig, P., Csató, L., Peters, J. Learning Tracking Control with Forward Models In pages: 259 -264, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2012 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

Movement Segmentation and Recognition for Imitation Learning

Meier, F., Theodorou, E., Schaal, S.

In Seventeenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, La Palma, Canary Islands, Fifteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics , April 2012 (inproceedings)

link (url) [BibTex]

am Meier, F., Theodorou, E., Schaal, S. Movement Segmentation and Recognition for Imitation Learning In Seventeenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, La Palma, Canary Islands, Fifteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics , April 2012 (inproceedings)

link (url) [BibTex]

Method of Molding Simple or Complex Micro and/or Nanopatterned Features on Both Planar or Non-Planar Molded Objects and Surfaces and the Molded Objects Produced Using Same

Sitti, M., Glass, P. S., Aksak, B.

April 2012, US Patent App. 14/394,172 (misc)

[BibTex]

pi Sitti, M., Glass, P. S., Aksak, B. Method of Molding Simple or Complex Micro and/or Nanopatterned Features on Both Planar or Non-Planar Molded Objects and Surfaces and the Molded Objects Produced Using Same April 2012, US Patent App. 14/394,172 (misc)

[BibTex]

Dry adhesives and methods for making dry adhesives

Sitti, M., Murphy, M., Aksak, B.

March 2012, US Patent App. 13/429,621 (misc)

[BibTex]

pi Sitti, M., Murphy, M., Aksak, B. Dry adhesives and methods for making dry adhesives March 2012, US Patent App. 13/429,621 (misc)

[BibTex]

Approximate Gaussian Integration using Expectation Propagation

Cunningham, J., Hennig, P., Lacoste-Julien, S.

In pages: 1-11, -, January 2012 (inproceedings) Submitted

Abstract

While Gaussian probability densities are omnipresent in applied mathematics, Gaussian cumulative probabilities are hard to calculate in any but the univariate case. We offer here an empirical study of the utility of Expectation Propagation (EP) as an approximate integration method for this problem. For rectangular integration regions, the approximation is highly accurate. We also extend the derivations to the more general case of polyhedral integration regions. However, we find that in this polyhedral case, EP's answer, though often accurate, can be almost arbitrarily wrong. These unexpected results elucidate an interesting and non-obvious feature of EP not yet studied in detail, both for the problem of Gaussian probabilities and for EP more generally.

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Web [BibTex]

ei pn Cunningham, J., Hennig, P., Lacoste-Julien, S. Approximate Gaussian Integration using Expectation Propagation In pages: 1-11, -, January 2012 (inproceedings) Submitted

Web [BibTex]

Kernel Topic Models

Hennig, P., Stern, D., Herbrich, R., Graepel, T.

In Fifteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 22, pages: 511-519, JMLR Proceedings, (Editors: Lawrence, N. D. and Girolami, M.), JMLR.org, AISTATS , 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Latent Dirichlet Allocation models discrete data as a mixture of discrete distributions, using Dirichlet beliefs over the mixture weights. We study a variation of this concept, in which the documents' mixture weight beliefs are replaced with squashed Gaussian distributions. This allows documents to be associated with elements of a Hilbert space, admitting kernel topic models (KTM), modelling temporal, spatial, hierarchical, social and other structure between documents. The main challenge is efficient approximate inference on the latent Gaussian. We present an approximate algorithm cast around a Laplace approximation in a transformed basis. The KTM can also be interpreted as a type of Gaussian process latent variable model, or as a topic model conditional on document features, uncovering links between earlier work in these areas.

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PDF Web [BibTex]

ei pn Hennig, P., Stern, D., Herbrich, R., Graepel, T. Kernel Topic Models In Fifteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 22, pages: 511-519, JMLR Proceedings, (Editors: Lawrence, N. D. and Girolami, M.), JMLR.org, AISTATS , 2012 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

From Dynamic Movement Primitives to Associative Skill Memories

Pastor, P., Kalakrishnan, M., Meier, F., Stulp, F., Buchli, J., Theodorou, E., Schaal, S.

Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

am Pastor, P., Kalakrishnan, M., Meier, F., Stulp, F., Buchli, J., Theodorou, E., Schaal, S. From Dynamic Movement Primitives to Associative Skill Memories Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

Nonparametric System Identification and Control for Periodic Error Correction in Telescopes

Klenske, E. D.

University of Stuttgart, 2012 (diplomathesis)

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PDF [BibTex]

ei pn Klenske, E. D. Nonparametric System Identification and Control for Periodic Error Correction in Telescopes University of Stuttgart, 2012 (diplomathesis)

PDF [BibTex]

Inverse dynamics with optimal distribution of contact forces for the control of legged robots

Righetti, L., Schaal, S.

In Dynamic Walking 2012, Pensacola, 2012 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

am Righetti, L., Schaal, S. Inverse dynamics with optimal distribution of contact forces for the control of legged robots In Dynamic Walking 2012, Pensacola, 2012 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

Automated Tip-Based 2-D Mechanical Assembly of Micro/Nanoparticles

Onal, C. D., Ozcan, O., Sitti, M.

In Feedback Control of MEMS to Atoms, pages: 69-108, Springer US, 2012 (incollection)

[BibTex]

pi Onal, C. D., Ozcan, O., Sitti, M. Automated Tip-Based 2-D Mechanical Assembly of Micro/Nanoparticles In Feedback Control of MEMS to Atoms, pages: 69-108, Springer US, 2012 (incollection)

[BibTex]

Topological optimization for continuum compliant mechanisms via morphological evolution of traditional mechanisms

Lum, GZ, Yeo, SH, Yang, GL, Teo, TJ, Sitti, M

In 4th International Conference on Computational Methods, pages: 8, 2012 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

pi Lum, GZ, Yeo, SH, Yang, GL, Teo, TJ, Sitti, M Topological optimization for continuum compliant mechanisms via morphological evolution of traditional mechanisms In 4th International Conference on Computational Methods, pages: 8, 2012 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

Two-dimensional autonomous microparticle manipulation strategies for magnetic microrobots in fluidic environments

Pawashe, C., Floyd, S., Diller, E., Sitti, M.

IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 28(2):467-477, IEEE, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

pi Pawashe, C., Floyd, S., Diller, E., Sitti, M. Two-dimensional autonomous microparticle manipulation strategies for magnetic microrobots in fluidic environments IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 28(2):467-477, IEEE, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

Encoding of Periodic and their Transient Motions by a Single Dynamic Movement Primitive

Ernesti, J., Righetti, L., Do, M., Asfour, T., Schaal, S.

In 2012 12th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2012), pages: 57-64, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, November 2012 (inproceedings)

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link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am mg Ernesti, J., Righetti, L., Do, M., Asfour, T., Schaal, S. Encoding of Periodic and their Transient Motions by a Single Dynamic Movement Primitive In 2012 12th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2012), pages: 57-64, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, November 2012 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Three-dimensional microfiber devices that mimic physiological environments to probe cell mechanics and signaling

Ruder, W. C., Pratt, E. D., Bakhru, S., Sitti, M., Zappe, S., Cheng, C., Antaki, J. F., LeDuc, P. R.

Lab on a Chip, 12(10):1775-1779, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

pi Ruder, W. C., Pratt, E. D., Bakhru, S., Sitti, M., Zappe, S., Cheng, C., Antaki, J. F., LeDuc, P. R. Three-dimensional microfiber devices that mimic physiological environments to probe cell mechanics and signaling Lab on a Chip, 12(10):1775-1779, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

Active visual search in unknown environments using uncertain semantics

Aydemir, Alper, Pronobis, Andrzej, Jensfelt, Patric, Sj, Kristoffer, Aydemir, Alper, Jensfelt, Patric, Aydemir, A, Jensfelt, P, Aydemir, A, Jensfelt, P, others

Transactions, 1, pages: 2329-2335, IEEE, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

pi Aydemir, Alper, Pronobis, Andrzej, Jensfelt, Patric, Sj, Kristoffer, Aydemir, Alper, Jensfelt, Patric, Aydemir, A, Jensfelt, P, Aydemir, A, Jensfelt, P, others Active visual search in unknown environments using uncertain semantics Transactions, 1, pages: 2329-2335, IEEE, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

Modelling of conductive atomic force microscope probes for scanning tunnelling microscope operation

Ozcan, O, Sitti, M

IET Micro \& Nano Letters, 7(4):329-333, IET, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

pi Ozcan, O, Sitti, M Modelling of conductive atomic force microscope probes for scanning tunnelling microscope operation IET Micro \& Nano Letters, 7(4):329-333, IET, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

Shape memory polymer-based flexure stiffness control in a miniature flapping-wing robot

Hines, L., Arabagi, V., Sitti, M.

IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 28(4):987-990, IEEE, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

pi Hines, L., Arabagi, V., Sitti, M. Shape memory polymer-based flexure stiffness control in a miniature flapping-wing robot IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 28(4):987-990, IEEE, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

Micro-manipulation using rotational fluid flows induced by remote magnetic micro-manipulators

Ye, Z., Diller, E., Sitti, M.

Journal of Applied Physics, 112(6):064912, AIP, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

pi Ye, Z., Diller, E., Sitti, M. Micro-manipulation using rotational fluid flows induced by remote magnetic micro-manipulators Journal of Applied Physics, 112(6):064912, AIP, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

Learning Force Control Policies for Compliant Robotic Manipulation

Kalakrishnan, M., Righetti, L., Pastor, P., Schaal, S.

In ICML’12 Proceedings of the 29th International Coference on International Conference on Machine Learning, pages: 49-50, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2012 (inproceedings)

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[BibTex]

am mg Kalakrishnan, M., Righetti, L., Pastor, P., Schaal, S. Learning Force Control Policies for Compliant Robotic Manipulation In ICML’12 Proceedings of the 29th International Coference on International Conference on Machine Learning, pages: 49-50, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2012 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

Remotely addressable magnetic composite micropumps

Diller, E., Miyashita, S., Sitti, M.

Rsc Advances, 2(9):3850-3856, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

pi Diller, E., Miyashita, S., Sitti, M. Remotely addressable magnetic composite micropumps Rsc Advances, 2(9):3850-3856, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

Flapping Wings with DC-Motors via Direct, Elastic Transmissions

Azhar, M., Campolo, D., Lau, G., Sitti, M.

In Proceedings of International Conference on Intelligent Unmanned Systems, 8, 2012 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

pi Azhar, M., Campolo, D., Lau, G., Sitti, M. Flapping Wings with DC-Motors via Direct, Elastic Transmissions In Proceedings of International Conference on Intelligent Unmanned Systems, 8, 2012 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

Investigation of bioinspired gecko fibers to improve adhesion of HeartLander surgical robot

Tortora, G., Glass, P., Wood, N., Aksak, B., Menciassi, A., Sitti, M., Riviere, C.

In Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2012 Annual International Conference of the IEEE, pages: 908-911, 2012 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

pi Tortora, G., Glass, P., Wood, N., Aksak, B., Menciassi, A., Sitti, M., Riviere, C. Investigation of bioinspired gecko fibers to improve adhesion of HeartLander surgical robot In Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2012 Annual International Conference of the IEEE, pages: 908-911, 2012 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

Magnetic hysteresis for multi-state addressable magnetic microrobotic control

Diller, E., Miyashita, S., Sitti, M.

In Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on, pages: 2325-2331, 2012 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

pi Diller, E., Miyashita, S., Sitti, M. Magnetic hysteresis for multi-state addressable magnetic microrobotic control In Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on, pages: 2325-2331, 2012 (inproceedings)

[BibTex]

Quadratic programming for inverse dynamics with optimal distribution of contact forces

Righetti, L., Schaal, S.

In 2012 12th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2012), pages: 538-543, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, November 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

In this contribution we propose an inverse dynamics controller for a humanoid robot that exploits torque redundancy to minimize any combination of linear and quadratic costs in the contact forces and the commands. In addition the controller satisfies linear equality and inequality constraints in the contact forces and the commands such as torque limits, unilateral contacts or friction cones limits. The originality of our approach resides in the formulation of the problem as a quadratic program where we only need to solve for the control commands and where the contact forces are optimized implicitly. Furthermore, we do not need a structured representation of the dynamics of the robot (i.e. an explicit computation of the inertia matrix). It is in contrast with existing methods based on quadratic programs. The controller is then robust to uncertainty in the estimation of the dynamics model and the optimization is fast enough to be implemented in high bandwidth torque control loops that are increasingly available on humanoid platforms. We demonstrate properties of our controller with simulations of a human size humanoid robot.

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link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am mg Righetti, L., Schaal, S. Quadratic programming for inverse dynamics with optimal distribution of contact forces In 2012 12th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2012), pages: 538-543, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, November 2012 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Model-free reinforcement learning of impedance control in stochastic environments

Stulp, Freek, Buchli, Jonas, Ellmer, Alice, Mistry, Michael, Theodorou, Evangelos A., Schaal, S.

Autonomous Mental Development, IEEE Transactions on, 4(4):330-341, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

am Stulp, Freek, Buchli, Jonas, Ellmer, Alice, Mistry, Michael, Theodorou, Evangelos A., Schaal, S. Model-free reinforcement learning of impedance control in stochastic environments Autonomous Mental Development, IEEE Transactions on, 4(4):330-341, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

12th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2012), Osaka, Japan, November 29 - Dec. 1, 2012

IEEE, 2012 (proceedings)

link (url) [BibTex]

am 12th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2012), Osaka, Japan, November 29 - Dec. 1, 2012 IEEE, 2012 (proceedings)

link (url) [BibTex]

Shape-Programmable Soft Capsule Robots for Semi-Implantable Drug Delivery

Yim, S., Sitti, M.

Mechatronics, IEEE/ASME Transactions on, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

pi Yim, S., Sitti, M. Shape-Programmable Soft Capsule Robots for Semi-Implantable Drug Delivery Mechatronics, IEEE/ASME Transactions on, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

Control of multiple heterogeneous magnetic microrobots in two dimensions on nonspecialized surfaces

Diller, E., Floyd, S., Pawashe, C., Sitti, M.

IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 28(1):172-182, IEEE, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

pi Diller, E., Floyd, S., Pawashe, C., Sitti, M. Control of multiple heterogeneous magnetic microrobots in two dimensions on nonspecialized surfaces IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 28(1):172-182, IEEE, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

Gecko-Inspired Controllable Adhesive Structures Applied to Micromanipulation

Mengüç, Y., Yang, S. Y., Kim, S., Rogers, J. A., Sitti, M.

Advanced Functional Materials, 22(6):1245-1245, WILEY-VCH Verlag, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

pi Mengüç, Y., Yang, S. Y., Kim, S., Rogers, J. A., Sitti, M. Gecko-Inspired Controllable Adhesive Structures Applied to Micromanipulation Advanced Functional Materials, 22(6):1245-1245, WILEY-VCH Verlag, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

Elastomer surfaces with directionally dependent adhesion strength and their use in transfer printing with continuous roll-to-roll applications

Yang, S. Y., Carlson, A., Cheng, H., Yu, Q., Ahmed, N., Wu, J., Kim, S., Sitti, M., Ferreira, P. M., Huang, Y., others,

Advanced Materials, 24(16):2117-2122, WILEY-VCH Verlag, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

pi Yang, S. Y., Carlson, A., Cheng, H., Yu, Q., Ahmed, N., Wu, J., Kim, S., Sitti, M., Ferreira, P. M., Huang, Y., others, Elastomer surfaces with directionally dependent adhesion strength and their use in transfer printing with continuous roll-to-roll applications Advanced Materials, 24(16):2117-2122, WILEY-VCH Verlag, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

Effect of retraction speed on adhesion of elastomer fibrillar structures

Abusomwan, U., Sitti, M.

Applied Physics Letters, 101(21):211907, AIP, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

pi Abusomwan, U., Sitti, M. Effect of retraction speed on adhesion of elastomer fibrillar structures Applied Physics Letters, 101(21):211907, AIP, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

Towards Associative Skill Memories

Pastor, P., Kalakrishnan, M., Righetti, L., Schaal, S.

In 2012 12th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2012), pages: 309-315, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, November 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Movement primitives as basis of movement planning and control have become a popular topic in recent years. The key idea of movement primitives is that a rather small set of stereotypical movements should suffice to create a large set of complex manipulation skills. An interesting side effect of stereotypical movement is that it also creates stereotypical sensory events, e.g., in terms of kinesthetic variables, haptic variables, or, if processed appropriately, visual variables. Thus, a movement primitive executed towards a particular object in the environment will associate a large number of sensory variables that are typical for this manipulation skill. These association can be used to increase robustness towards perturbations, and they also allow failure detection and switching towards other behaviors. We call such movement primitives augmented with sensory associations Associative Skill Memories (ASM). This paper addresses how ASMs can be acquired by imitation learning and how they can create robust manipulation skill by determining subsequent ASMs online to achieve a particular manipulation goal. Evaluation for grasping and manipulation with a Barrett WAM/Hand illustrate our approach.

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link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am mg Pastor, P., Kalakrishnan, M., Righetti, L., Schaal, S. Towards Associative Skill Memories In 2012 12th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2012), pages: 309-315, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, November 2012 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Template-based learning of grasp selection

Herzog, A., Pastor, P., Kalakrishnan, M., Righetti, L., Asfour, T., Schaal, S.

In 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages: 2379-2384, IEEE, Saint Paul, USA, 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

The ability to grasp unknown objects is an important skill for personal robots, which has been addressed by many present and past research projects, but still remains an open problem. A crucial aspect of grasping is choosing an appropriate grasp configuration, i.e. the 6d pose of the hand relative to the object and its finger configuration. Finding feasible grasp configurations for novel objects, however, is challenging because of the huge variety in shape and size of these objects. Moreover, possible configurations also depend on the specific kinematics of the robotic arm and hand in use. In this paper, we introduce a new grasp selection algorithm able to find object grasp poses based on previously demonstrated grasps. Assuming that objects with similar shapes can be grasped in a similar way, we associate to each demonstrated grasp a grasp template. The template is a local shape descriptor for a possible grasp pose and is constructed using 3d information from depth sensors. For each new object to grasp, the algorithm then finds the best grasp candidate in the library of templates. The grasp selection is also able to improve over time using the information of previous grasp attempts to adapt the ranking of the templates. We tested the algorithm on two different platforms, the Willow Garage PR2 and the Barrett WAM arm which have very different hands. Our results show that the algorithm is able to find good grasp configurations for a large set of objects from a relatively small set of demonstrations, and does indeed improve its performance over time.

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link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am mg Herzog, A., Pastor, P., Kalakrishnan, M., Righetti, L., Asfour, T., Schaal, S. Template-based learning of grasp selection In 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages: 2379-2384, IEEE, Saint Paul, USA, 2012 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

Reinforcement Learning with Sequences of Motion Primitives for Robust Manipulation

Stulp, F., Theodorou, E., Schaal, S.

IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

am Stulp, F., Theodorou, E., Schaal, S. Reinforcement Learning with Sequences of Motion Primitives for Robust Manipulation IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

Impact and Surface Tension in Water: a Study of Landing Bodies

Shih, B., Laham, L., Lee, K. J., Krasnoff, N., Diller, E., Sitti, M.

Bio-inspired Robotics Final Project, Carnegie Mellon University, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

pi Shih, B., Laham, L., Lee, K. J., Krasnoff, N., Diller, E., Sitti, M. Impact and Surface Tension in Water: a Study of Landing Bodies Bio-inspired Robotics Final Project, Carnegie Mellon University, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

Design and rolling locomotion of a magnetically actuated soft capsule endoscope

Yim, S., Sitti, M.

IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 28(1):183-194, IEEE, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

pi Yim, S., Sitti, M. Design and rolling locomotion of a magnetically actuated soft capsule endoscope IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 28(1):183-194, IEEE, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

Design and manufacturing of a controllable miniature flapping wing robotic platform

Arabagi, V., Hines, L., Sitti, M.

The International Journal of Robotics Research, 31(6):785-800, SAGE Publications Sage UK: London, England, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

pi Arabagi, V., Hines, L., Sitti, M. Design and manufacturing of a controllable miniature flapping wing robotic platform The International Journal of Robotics Research, 31(6):785-800, SAGE Publications Sage UK: London, England, 2012 (article)

[BibTex]

Chemotactic steering of bacteria propelled microbeads

Kim, D., Liu, A., Diller, E., Sitti, M.

Biomedical microdevices, 14(6):1009-1017, Springer US, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

pi Kim, D., Liu, A., Diller, E., Sitti, M. Chemotactic steering of bacteria propelled microbeads Biomedical microdevices, 14(6):1009-1017, Springer US, 2012 (article)

Project Page [BibTex]

Probabilistic depth image registration incorporating nonvisual information

Wüthrich, M., Pastor, P., Righetti, L., Billard, A., Schaal, S.

In 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages: 3637-3644, IEEE, Saint Paul, USA, 2012 (inproceedings)

Abstract

In this paper, we derive a probabilistic registration algorithm for object modeling and tracking. In many robotics applications, such as manipulation tasks, nonvisual information about the movement of the object is available, which we will combine with the visual information. Furthermore we do not only consider observations of the object, but we also take space into account which has been observed to not be part of the object. Furthermore we are computing a posterior distribution over the relative alignment and not a point estimate as typically done in for example Iterative Closest Point (ICP). To our knowledge no existing algorithm meets these three conditions and we thus derive a novel registration algorithm in a Bayesian framework. Experimental results suggest that the proposed methods perform favorably in comparison to PCL [1] implementations of feature mapping and ICP, especially if nonvisual information is available.

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link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am mg Wüthrich, M., Pastor, P., Righetti, L., Billard, A., Schaal, S. Probabilistic depth image registration incorporating nonvisual information In 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pages: 3637-3644, IEEE, Saint Paul, USA, 2012 (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

2010

Reinforcement learning of full-body humanoid motor skills

Stulp, F., Buchli, J., Theodorou, E., Schaal, S.

In Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2010 10th IEEE-RAS International Conference on, pages: 405-410, December 2010, clmc (inproceedings)

Abstract

Applying reinforcement learning to humanoid robots is challenging because humanoids have a large number of degrees of freedom and state and action spaces are continuous. Thus, most reinforcement learning algorithms would become computationally infeasible and require a prohibitive amount of trials to explore such high-dimensional spaces. In this paper, we present a probabilistic reinforcement learning approach, which is derived from the framework of stochastic optimal control and path integrals. The algorithm, called Policy Improvement with Path Integrals (PI²), has a surprisingly simple form, has no open tuning parameters besides the exploration noise, is model-free, and performs numerically robustly in high dimensional learning problems. We demonstrate how PI² is able to learn full-body motor skills on a 34-DOF humanoid robot. To demonstrate the generality of our approach, we also apply PI² in the context of variable impedance control, where both planned trajectories and gain schedules for each joint are optimized simultaneously.

link (url) [BibTex]

2010

am Stulp, F., Buchli, J., Theodorou, E., Schaal, S. Reinforcement learning of full-body humanoid motor skills In Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2010 10th IEEE-RAS International Conference on, pages: 405-410, December 2010, clmc (inproceedings)

link (url) [BibTex]

Using an Infinite Von Mises-Fisher Mixture Model to Cluster Treatment Beam Directions in External Radiation Therapy

Bangert, M., Hennig, P., Oelfke, U.

In pages: 746-751 , (Editors: Draghici, S. , T.M. Khoshgoftaar, V. Palade, W. Pedrycz, M.A. Wani, X. Zhu), IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, Ninth International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), December 2010 (inproceedings)

Abstract

We present a method for fully automated selection of treatment beam ensembles for external radiation therapy. We reformulate the beam angle selection problem as a clustering problem of locally ideal beam orientations distributed on the unit sphere. For this purpose we construct an infinite mixture of von Mises-Fisher distributions, which is suited in general for density estimation from data on the D-dimensional sphere. Using a nonparametric Dirichlet process prior, our model infers probability distributions over both the number of clusters and their parameter values. We describe an efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo inference algorithm for posterior inference from experimental data in this model. The performance of the suggested beam angle selection framework is illustrated for one intra-cranial, pancreas, and prostate case each. The infinite von Mises-Fisher mixture model (iMFMM) creates between 18 and 32 clusters, depending on the patient anatomy. This suggests to use the iMFMM directly for beam ensemble selection in robotic radio surgery, or to generate low-dimensional input for both subsequent optimization of trajectories for arc therapy and beam ensemble selection for conventional radiation therapy.

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Web DOI [BibTex]

ei pn Bangert, M., Hennig, P., Oelfke, U. Using an Infinite Von Mises-Fisher Mixture Model to Cluster Treatment Beam Directions in External Radiation Therapy In pages: 746-751 , (Editors: Draghici, S. , T.M. Khoshgoftaar, V. Palade, W. Pedrycz, M.A. Wani, X. Zhu), IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, USA, Ninth International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), December 2010 (inproceedings)

Web DOI [BibTex]

Relative Entropy Policy Search

Peters, J., Mülling, K., Altun, Y.

In Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages: 1607-1612, (Editors: Fox, M. , D. Poole), AAAI Press, Menlo Park, CA, USA, Twenty-Fourth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-10), July 2010 (inproceedings)

Abstract

Policy search is a successful approach to reinforcement learning. However, policy improvements often result in the loss of information. Hence, it has been marred by premature convergence and implausible solutions. As first suggested in the context of covariant policy gradients (Bagnell and Schneider 2003), many of these problems may be addressed by constraining the information loss. In this paper, we continue this path of reasoning and suggest the Relative Entropy Policy Search (REPS) method. The resulting method differs significantly from previous policy gradient approaches and yields an exact update step. It works well on typical reinforcement learning benchmark problems.

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PDF Web [BibTex]

am ei Peters, J., Mülling, K., Altun, Y. Relative Entropy Policy Search In Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages: 1607-1612, (Editors: Fox, M. , D. Poole), AAAI Press, Menlo Park, CA, USA, Twenty-Fourth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-10), July 2010 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

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