Quantifying coherence when learning behaviors via teleoperation

Abstract

Applications of robotics are quickly changing. Just as computer use evolved from research purposes to everyday functions, applications of robotics are making a transition to mainstream usage. With this change in applications comes a change in the user base of robotics, and there is a pronounced move to reduce the complexity of robotic control. The move to reduce complexity is linked to the separation of the role of robot designer and robot operator. For many target applications, the operator of the robot needs to be able to correct and augment its capabilities. One method to enable this is learning from human data, which has already been successfully applied to robotics. We assert that this learning process is only viable when the demonstrated human behavior is coherent. In this work we test the hypothesis that quantifying the coherence in the provided instruction can provide useful information about the progress of the learning process. We discuss results from the application of this method to reactive behaviors. Such behaviors permit the learning process to be computationally tractable in real-time. These results support the hypothesis that coherence is important for this type of learning and also show that this property can be used to provide an avenue for self regulation of the learning process.