Bottom-up action modeling via spatial factorization for serving food

Abstract

The goal state of the robot motion involved in an action is determined by the action model based on the effect of the action and the scene state. This study focuses on serving food as a robot action; the action model of serving food is obtained based on demonstrations. The arrangement position is determined by considering the spatial relations between the object being served and the multiple selected reference objects. Therefore, it is necessary to learn the importance of the relations for the reference and the spatial relations between objects based on demonstrations. In this paper, bottom-up action modeling is proposed as an action modeling approach based on the demonstration. In this method, the spatial relations between labeled objects and the importance of the relations are learned through spatial factorization of the scene into partial relations. This approach enables the robot to determine the arrangement position intended by the demonstrator, even in unknown scenes. The effectiveness of the proposed method was evaluated by simulation, which the action of serving food.