Task learning through imitation and human–robot interaction

Abstract

Human–robot interaction is a rapidly growing area of robotics. Environments that feature the interaction of humans and robots present a number of challenges involving robot learning (imitative) and interactive capabilities. The two problems are tightly related since, on the one hand, social interaction is often an important aspect of imitation learning and, on the other, imitative behavior enhances a robot's social and interactive capabilities. In this work we present a framework that unifies these issues, providing a natural means for robots to interact with people and to learn from interactive experiences.