1 / 28

Erich Rome Robot Control Architectures Department

EU Project MACS Multi-sensory Autonomous Cognitive Systems Interacting with Dynamic Environments for Perceiving and Using Affordances. Cognitive Systems Kick-Off Meeting, Bled, Oct 28–30, 2004. Erich Rome Robot Control Architectures Department. MACS Project Overview. Sections MACS Facts

Download Presentation

Erich Rome Robot Control Architectures Department

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. EU Project MACSMulti-sensory Autonomous Cognitive Systems Interacting with Dynamic Environments for Perceiving and Using Affordances Cognitive Systems Kick-Off Meeting, Bled, Oct 28–30, 2004 Erich RomeRobot Control Architectures Department

  2. MACS Project Overview • Sections • MACS Facts • Affordance-based Robot Control • The Vision & the Key Objectives • Steps to Achieve the Objectives • The Key Milestones • Next Steps: Some Details

  3. a. MACS: Facts • Project type: STReP • Grant no.: FP6-004381 • Project start: September 1, 2004 • Duration: 3 years • Kick-off meeting: Sankt Augustin, September 9–10, 2004 • Web site: www.macs-eu.org • Consortium: 5 participants

  4. a. MACS: Facts • Participants and Competences • 1 FhG/AIS (Coord.) Fraunhofer Institute for Autonomous Intelligent Systems, Sankt Augustin, D • Erich Rome Robot control architectures, robot & sensors & autonomous systems design, biologically inspired robot vision • 2 JR_DIB JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Graz, A • Lucas Paletta Computer vision, ANN-based sensorimotor learning, mobile mapping • 3 LiU-IDA Linköpings Universitet, AI & Integrated Computer Systems Division, S • Patrick Doherty Autonomous systems, knowledge representation, AI planning • 4 METU-KOVAN Middle East Technical University, Ankara, TR • Erol Sahin Evolutionary & swarm robotics, physics-based modelling & simulation, distributed computing environments • 5 OFAI Österreichische Studiengesellschaft für Kybernetik, Vienna, A • Georg Dorffner Cognitive modelling & neuroscience, symbol grounding, AI learning

  5. b. MACS: Affordance-based Robot Control • Some Objectives of the Cognitive Systems Call: • To construct embodied systems that can perceive, understand, and interact with their environment while performing goal-directed tasks. • Methodologies for the construction of robust and adaptive cognitive systems integrating perception, reasoning, representation and learning.

  6. b. MACS: Affordance-based Robot Control • The MACS Claim: • The use of affordances in control architectures may link perception, action, learning and reasoning in a new way. • Perceiving the world in terms of affordances will provide a paradigmaticchange in the architecture of embedded cognitive systems by helping to structure perception and reasoning in both an action-oriented and goal-directed way.

  7. b. MACS: Affordance-based Robot Control • Affordances: • Notion created by cognitive psychologist J. J. Gibson (1979): • „An affordance is a resource or support that the environment offers an agent for action. • The agent must possess the capabilities to perceive and act upon it.“

  8. b. MACS: Affordance-based Robot Control • Examples of Affordances: throw use as tool Place to look for prey hide, climb

  9. b. MACS: Affordance-based Robot Control • Affordances (1): • Affordances can be put in terms of abstract properties:throwable -> fist-sized dense object of certain weight rangesittable upon -> knee-high flat stable horizontal surface of certain minimum size • Affordances depend particularly on the agent’s propertieslike body size, weight, form, and its perception and action capabilities

  10. b. MACS: Affordance-based Robot Control • Affordances (2): • Object identity is just another property, not necessarily the most important one – Its importance is goal dependent • The abilities to perceive and act upon affordances may be acquired by learning – by experimentation and observation • Acting upon affordances may require episodic knowledge:The sequence of actions required to act upon the affordance of a cup of coffee to drink from

  11. b. MACS: Affordance-based Robot Control • Affordances (3): • Selection of affordances depends on high-level goals • Goals influence perception of affordances • We do not get flooded by thousands of affordances • Affordances comprise a functional view of environment • Affordances are suited to structure the perceptual inputfor action and reasoning • Link for perception, action, reasoning and learning

  12. b. MACS: Affordance-based Robot Control • Some implications for adaptivity: • Affordances would allow greater flexibility in manipulation tasks: If a searched object for a manipulation is not available, therobot may look for another one with the same affordancesand act upon the substitute instead. • Such an ability would be especially helpful in complex environments with significant dynamics.

  13. c. MACS: The Vision • The Vision: • Affordance-based control as a new paradigm to better link perception, action, reasoning and learning, suited to advance the further development of embodied cognitive systems.

  14. c. MACS: The Key Objectives • Main objective of MACS: • Explore and exploit the concept of affordances for the design and implementation of autonomous mobile robots • Develop affordance-based control as a method for robotics • Provide a new way for reasoning and learning to connect with reactive robot control

  15. c. MACS: The Key Objectives • 5 scientific & technological objectives • plus • 1 dissemination objective

  16. c. MACS: The Key Objectives • Scientific and technological objectives: • A radically new robot control architecture, implementing affordance-based control • Affordance-based control changes deeply the flow of information as well as the required processes • Use of affordances in control architectures is no emergent phenomenon, • cannot be added on top of an existing control architecture, • needs to be considered in the basic design. • An affordance-based architecture will be proposed, tested and evaluated. • Affordances will be integrated into perception, action and learning.

  17. c. MACS: The Key Objectives • Scientific and technological objectives: • Grounded and goal-directed perception of affordances • • Affordances spring off perception on a low level, associating salient perceptual features tothe representation of what an object affords. • • What can or should be perceived and used as an affordance depends on the sensors and actuators that the robot has. • • Filtering mechanism to prevent the robot from drowning in affordances needs to be in effect deep down in the process of affordance perception. • • It has to be influenced from high-level goal-orientation or attention modes preventing currently irrelevant affordances from distracting the controller.

  18. c. MACS: The Key Objectives • Scientific and technological objectives: • Explicit affordance representations for different granularity levels • Using affordances for reasoning and symbolic learning requires an explicit representation • Representation includes perception and action side of an affordance plus • episodic knowledge and • expectations about feed-back from the environment when acting upon an affordance.

  19. c. MACS: The Key Objectives • Scientific and technological objectives: • Learning affordances by experimentation or by observation • Affordances are individual on sensoric, physical, and experience level • A natural way of getting at affordances is learning • Learning by individual experimentation or by imitation. • Suitable learning methods will be developed • Extreme option of teaching: programming • Will be used for higher-level, complex or abstract affordances

  20. c. MACS: The Key Objectives • Scientific and technological objectives: • Integrated demonstrator on an autonomous mobile robot • Results will be demonstrated in integrated form • Mobile robot: able to navigate and do simple manipulation tasks • Wide range of perceptions through multi-modal sensor configuration including vision and a 3D Laser scanner • Robot control: plan-based to provide goal-directed behaviour

  21. c. MACS: The Key Objectives • Dissemination objective: • Make the different involved scientific communities, possible appliers of the results, and the interested general public aware of the respective MACS achievements

  22. d. MACS: Steps to Achieve the Objectives • Workpackages: • WP0 – Management (13+6 PM) • WP1 – Infrastructure (39+4 PM) • WP2 – Affordance-based Control Architecture (57+6 PM) • WP3 – Perception of Affordances (76+2 PM) • WP4 – Representation of Affordances (42+4 PM) • WP5 – Learning of Affordances (47+4 PM) • WP6 – Proof of Concept & Dissemination (38+4 PM)

  23. Affordance-based Robot Control Reference Implementations Module Prototypes Integration & Simulation Demonstrator Specifications Surveys 4 7 12 18 24 30 33 M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 e. MACS: The Key Milestones month

  24. f. MACS: Next Steps • Physical demonstrator • KURT2 (with 3D Laser scanner) • Commercial platform for research & education • Developed initially at FhG/AIS,Produced & distributed by KTO • 3D Scanner developed and assembledat FhG/AIS, • Simple gripper under construction

  25. f. MACS: Next Steps • Next steps: • Publish evaluation of state of the art in affordance-related research • Specify a demonstrator scenario • Design missions and tasks that the affordance-based robot should accomplish in the demonstrator scenario • Specify requirements for perception, representation and learning of affordances as well as for reasoning about and acting upon affordances • Later:Publish benchmark problems suited to demonstrate the power and limitations of the approach

  26. f. MACS: Next Steps • Next step towards dissemination: • Application for a Dagstuhl seminar “Towards Affordance-based Robot Control” • International conference and research center for computer science • Schloss Dagstuhl in Wadern (close to Saarbrücken, Germany) • Dagstuhl-Seminars: gatherings of 35–45 scientists working for a week on a specific computer science related topic with interdisciplinary aspects • International participants: established researchers and promising young scientists

  27. f. MACS: Next Steps • Dagstuhl seminar details: • Organizers: Erich Rome, Patrick Doherty, Georg Dorffner, Joachim HertzbergDeadline: Nov 15, 2004Seminar: 5 days in 1st half of 2006 • Preliminary list of potential participants; may be updated and extended when application succeeds • Participation interests can be expressed via email (rome@ais.fraunhofer.de)(preferably non-German female young researchers) • Participation fee (150 €) also covers accommodation and foodTravel expenses are not covered • Young researchers may apply for grants covering travel expensesInformation available at: http://www.dagstuhl.de/HLSC/

  28. Thank you for your attention

More Related