Learning Actions to Improve the Perceptual Anchoring of Objects

Abstract

In this paper, we examine how to ground symbols referring to objects in perceptual data from a robot system by examining object entities and their changes over time. In particular, we approach the challenge by 1) tracking and maintaining object entities over time; and 2) utilizing an artificial neural network to learn the coupling between words referring to actions and movement patterns of tracked object entities. For this purpose, we propose a framework which relies on the notations presented in perceptual anchoring. We further present a practical extension of the notation such that our framework can track and maintain the history of detected object entities. Our approach is evaluated using everyday objects typically found in a home environment. Our object classification module has the possibility to detect and classify over several hundred object categories. We demonstrate how the framework creates and maintains, both in space and time, representations of objects such as 'spoon' and 'coffee mug'. These representations are later used for training of different sequential learning algorithms in order to learn movement actions such as 'pour' and 'stir'. We finally exemplify how learned movements actions, combined with common-sense knowledge, further can be used to improve the anchoring process per se.