Three Examples of Learning Robots

Abstract

Future robots, especially service and personal robots, will need much more intelligence, robustness and user-friendliness. The ability to learn contributes to these characteristics and is, therefore, becoming more and more important. Three of the numerous varieties of learning are discussed together with results of realworld experiments with three autonomous robots: (1) the acquisition of map knowledge by a mobile robot, allowing it to navigate in a network of corridors, (2) the acquisition of motion control knowledge by a calibration-free manipulator, allowing it to gain task-related experience and improve its manipulation skills while it is working, and (3) the ability to learn how to perform service tasks in an initially unknown environment through dialogues with initially unknown and untrained users, and to resolve ambiguous situations, thus displaying intelligent and cooperative behavior.