Researchers uncover a more basic method of teaching new skills to robots.

SHARE

Researchers uncover a more basic method of teaching new skills to robots.

Table of Contents

According to the researchers, it just took a few human examples to teach a robot how to conduct a new pick-and-place activity. According to the researchers, this could allow a human to teach a robot to retrieve previously unseen objects placed in random locations in as little as 15 minutes.

In response to an influx of e-commerce orders, a warehouse robot selects mugs from a shelf and places them into shipping boxes. Everything is fine until the warehouse gets a makeover and the robot needs to grab higher, narrower mugs that are stacked upside down.

The robot must be retrained after manually annotating hundreds of pictures illustrating how to use the new cups. It often takes many hours to reprogramme them.

The robot, however, can now be reprogrammed with only a small number of human cases using a revolutionary technique developed by MIT researchers. Using machine-learning technology, a robot can pick up and place previously unidentified items in a variety of random placements. If all went according to plan, the robot would be ready to start a new pick-and-place task in as little as 10 to 15 minutes.

The new technique.

A neural network is employed in this technique to reconstruct the forms of three-dimensional objects. The neural network learns about 3D geometry from the demonstrations. After only a few demonstrations, the system can recognise and understand new objects that are similar to those in the demonstrations.

According to the researchers, who only used ten samples to train the robot, a robot can handle mugs, bowls, and bottles that have never been seen before.

The fundamental contribution is the capacity to provide robots with new skills in a significantly more efficient manner than previously conceivable when they are expected to operate in more unstructured scenarios with a high degree of variability.

The concept of generalisation through construction is intriguing, especially since this subject is normally much more difficult.

Recognize the fundamentals of geometry.

A robot may be designed to pick up a specific thing, but if that object is lying on its side (for example, as a result of a fall), the robot treats it as if it were in a completely different circumstance. One reason they find this task hard is that machine-learning systems have a hard time adapting to new object orientations.

To solve this difficulty, the researchers developed a Neural Descriptor Field (NDF), a novel sort of neural network model that automatically learns the three-dimensional geometry of a class of objects.

The model produces a three-dimensional point cloud, which is a collection of three-dimensional data points or coordinates arranged in a circular manner. A depth camera is used to acquire the data points, which measure the distance between an object and a perspective. If you don’t want to train the network again, you can use it to recognise real-world objects without having to do any extra work.

When the NDF was created, a trait known as equivariance was taken into account. When the model is shown an upright mug and, subsequently, the same mug on its side, it recognises the second mug as the same object with the handle turned.

“This equivariance is what allows us to much more effectively handle cases where the object you observe is in some arbitrary orientation.” Simeonov – the co-lead author of the paper says.

As the NDF improves its capacity to reconstruct the forms of similar objects, it also improves its ability to correlate the components of related items. It learns, for example, that mug handles are all the same size and form, despite the fact that some mugs are taller and wider, while others are smaller and longer in length.

If you utilised a different method, you’d have to manually mark each component. This method, on the other hand, recognises these elements throughout the form rebuilding process automatically and without the need for human intervention.

The researchers were able to teach a robot a new ability with only a few actual instances using this trained NDF model, confirming their accomplishment. They set a robot’s hand on the proper part of an object, such as the rim of a bowl or the handle of a cup, and then record where the fingertips are.

According to Du, the NDF’s broad understanding of 3D geometry and ability to reconstruct shapes allows it to deduce a new shape’s structure, allowing it to apply this to new objects in any placement.

A winning technique was found.

To see if their method worked, they tested it on cups, bowls, and bottles that were used as props in simulations as well as a real robotic arm.

Their technique outperformed the best baseline on pick-and-place tasks, including novel objects in novel orientations, with an 85 percent success rate versus a 45 percent success rate for the best baseline. Success requires the ability to grab a new thing and put it in a good place, like putting mugs on a rack.

There are many baselines that use 2D picture data instead of 3D geometry, making equivariance integration more challenging. This is one of the reasons the NDF approach outperformed the others.

Despite the researchers’ enthusiasm for the approach’s efficacy, their method is only relevant to the object category for which it was trained. Because their shapes are too different from the shapes of the mugs on which the network has been trained, a robot that has been taught to pick up mugs will not be able to pick up boxes or headphones.

Building it up to several categories or altogether eliminating the concept of category in the future would be amazing according to Simeonov.

Apart from that, they plan to keep adding things that aren’t rigid to the system over time, with the goal of one day being able to pick and place things when the target area moves.


Story Source: Original story written by Adam Zewe at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length by Scible News.


Enjoyed reading this article...

Create a FREE account to let us know what you think about it!

It only takes a few seconds to create an account. Once you join, you can comment on hundreds of breaking science stories. It’s completely free.

Found this interesting? Share it with others:

LATEST

Engineering, Robotics

GO AD-FREE

Upgrade to News+ & support our small team of writers.

We really don’t want to rely on ads to keep our platform running! Go ad-free by clicking the button below to become a News+ member. It helps us to keep bringing you the latest science news!

If you aren’t able to join today please bookmark us for when you’re feeling extra generous…it goes a long way!

GO AD-FREE

Upgrade to News+ & support our small team of writers.

We really don’t want to rely on ads to keep our platform running! Go ad-free by clicking the button below to become a News+ member. It helps us to keep bringing you the latest science news!

If you aren’t able to join today please bookmark us for when you’re feeling extra generous…it goes a long way!