Learning by Observation of Furniture Manipulation in Daily Assistive Tasks for Humanoid Robots

Discussion about the elements of learning of manipulation in humanoid robots, a method of learning of grasping points and some experiments are presented. In order to realize humanoid robots which assist human activities in daily life, it is an important ability to learn the manipulation of objects from humans or by themselves. It is thought that the manipulation of objects and the recognition of humans, objects and relation between them are necessary for the learning of manipulation. The manipulation and recognition of the objects must be based on the knowledge which could be learned by the robots. We have developed the object recognition and manipulation system whose knowledge could be learned by the robots and now have the interest on recognition of humans and the relation between humans and objects. We discuss the elements which are necessary to realize the learning ability and describe the recognition and manipulation system of objects whose knowledge could be learned, then as a first step present a method of learning of grasping points from humans and some experiments.