Robot learning from few demonstrations by exploiting the structure and geometry of data

Sylvain Calinon,
EPFL – École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne –
Abstract:
Many human-centered robot applications would benefit from the development of robots that could acquire new movements and skills from human demonstration, and that could reproduce these movements in new situations. From a machine learning perspective, the challenge is to acquire skills from only few interactions with strong generalization demands. It requires the development of intuitive active learning interfaces to acquire meaningful demonstrations, the development of models that can exploit the structure and geometry of the acquired data in an efficient way, and the development of adaptive controllers that can exploit the learned task variations and coordination patterns. The developed models need to serve several purposes (recognition, prediction, generation), and be compatible with different learning strategies (imitation, emulation, exploration).
I will present an approach combining model predictive control, statistical learning and differential geometry to pursue such goal. I will illustrate the proposed approach with various applications, including robots that are close to us (human-robot collaboration, robot for dressing assistance), part of us (prosthetic hand control from tactile array data), or far from us (teleoperation of bimanual robot in deep water).
Bio
Dr Sylvain Calinon is a Senior Researcher at the Idiap Research Institute (http://idiap.ch). He is also a lecturer at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), and an external collaborator at the Department of Advanced Robotics (ADVR), Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). From 2009 to 2014, he was a Team Leader at ADVR, IIT. From 2007 to 2009, he was a Postdoc at the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory, EPFL, where he obtained his PhD in 2007. He is the author of 100+ publications at the crossroad of robot learning, adaptive control and human-robot interaction, with recognition including Best Paper Awards in the journal of Intelligent Service Robotics (2017) and at IEEE Ro-Man’2007, as well as Best Paper Award Finalist at ICRA’2016, ICIRA’2015, IROS’2013 and Humanoids’2009. He currently serves as Associate Editor in IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), Intelligent Service Robotics (Springer), and Frontiers in Robotics and AI.
Personal website: http://calinon.ch
Date: 2018-Jun-06 Time: 11:00:00 Room: IST Alameda – DEI Informática II, room 0.19
For more information:
Upcoming Events
INESC Brussels HUB Winter Meeting 2023

This edition of the HUB Winter Meeting will be co-organised with Science Business and will take place on the 30 and 31 January, in Lisbon, at Instituto Superior Técnico, Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
Please see below a summary of the agenda, this will be updated on the INESC Brussels HUB website regularly (confirmed speakers and other relevant info). Places for onsite participation are limited so registration is mandatory. Online participants will be sent a ZOOM link for each specific session on the 27th January.
INESC Brussels HUB website: https://hub.inesc.pt/
Monday, 30 January
a) Digital Europe Programme & Chips Act: state of play and possibilities for INESC.
9h to 10h30 GMT
(Exclusive for INESC researchers and administrators).
b) Science Business: how can INESC tap into Science Business network, activities and communications tools.
(Exclusive for INESC researchers and administrators).
c) Networking Lunch (for all onsite participants).
d) Roundtable: From rhetoric to reality – Embedding international strategy in the DNA of research organisations.
(Closed-door, roundtable workshop, Chatham House rules, open to INESC researchers and administrators, external participants by invitation only).
e) Networking Dinner
(By invitation only – INESC researchers participating onsite in the event are elegible to join).
Tuesday, 31 January
f) Workshop: How they did it? Strategic positioning for structural success in Horizon Europe: a discussion of best practices.
(Exclusive for INESC researchers, administrators and international invited speakers).
g) The public consultation on European R&I Programmes: Towards FP10.
(Closed-door, roundtable workshop, Chatham House rules, open to INESC researchers and administrators, external participants by invitation only).
h) Networking Lunch (for all onsite participants).
i) Management Committee meeting (Directors and POB members)
The HUB Winter Meeting aims at bringing together researchers and administrators from the 5 INESC institutes, affiliated higher education institutions in Portugal and abroad, with key European and global players, to:
– Discuss key research and innovation issues at EU level.
– Inform institutional policy and strategy.
– Exchange best-practices about R&I management, career development and policy positioning.
– Promote, discuss and deliver vision, visibility, networking and impactful communication.
– Create, identify and deepen partnerships and collaboration opportunities for collaborative R&I.