Understanding users intention: programming fine manipulation tasks by demonstration

The Programming by Demonstration (PbD) paradigm enable programming of service robots by inexperienced human users. The main goal of these systems is to allow the inexperienced human user to easily integrate motion and perception skills or complex problem solving strategies. Unfortunately, actual PbD systems deal only with manipulation based on Pick & Place operations. For complex service tasks these are insufficient. Therefore, this paper describes how fine manipulations like detecting screw movements can be recognized by a PbD system. In order to do this, finger movements and forces on the fingertips are gathered and analyzed while an object is grasped. This assumes sensory employment like a data glove and integrated tactile sensors. An overview of the used tactile sensors and the gathered signals is given. Furthermore the segmentation of users demonstration and the classification of the recognized dynamic grasp is pointed out. For classifying dynamic grasps a time delay method based on a Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used. Finally the symbolic representation of service tasks is briefly illustrated.