Acquisition Of Manipulation Skills Research Articles

Skill Learning by Autonomous Robotic Playing Using Active Learning and Exploratory Behavior Composition.

We consider the problem of autonomous acquisition of manipulation skills where problem-solving strategies are initially available only for a narrow range of situations. We propose to extend the range of solvable situations by autonomous play with the object. By applying previously-trained skills and behaviors, the robot learns how to prepare situations for which a successful strategy is already known. The information gathered during autonomous play is additionally used to train an environment model. This model is exploited for active learning and the generation of novel preparatory behaviors compositions. We apply our approach to a wide range of different manipulation tasks, e.g., book grasping, grasping of objects of different sizes by selecting different grasping strategies, placement on shelves, and tower disassembly. We show that the composite behavior generation mechanism enables the robot to solve previously-unsolvable tasks, e.g., tower disassembly. We use success statistics gained during real-world experiments to simulate the convergence behavior of our system. Simulation experiments show that the learning speed can be improved by around 30% by using active learning.

Causes of Youth Restiveness in Niger Delta Region of Nigeria: Implication of Violent Youth Behavior for National Unity and Sustainability

This paper investigated the characteristics of the Niger Delta Youths Restiveness and concludes that it is tantamount to national disintegration, rather than national sustainability. The growing and widespread youth restiveness and their involvement in violent crimes in recent times have become a matter of great concern for those genuinely interested in the unity and sustainability of his country. This is more so that the youths represent the collective aspirations of this country for a better tomorrow. Therefore, their involvement in all forms of violence and crime pose a great threat to the survival of the country. This paper closely looked at the causes, forms and Implication of Violent Youth Behavior for National Unity and Sustainability. The paper also recommends that the educational system be reviewed to lay more emphasis on the acquisition of manipulative skills for gainful self-employment as well as the creation of more employment opportunities for the youths.

Exploring Students’ Acquisition of Manipulative Skills during Science Practical Work

This paper reports a study on students’ science manipulative skills at the lower secondary school level. Students’ manipulative skills can be explored by understanding their technical skills and their functional aspects of performing experiment. However, this paper will focus on students’ technical skills in using basic scientific apparatus. Technical skills in this study refer to skill, abilities, and knowledge required for accomplishing a specific task in the laboratory. The skills include knowledge and skills needed to properly manipulate and operate scientific apparatus when executing a scientific task. It was found that students perform the skills in a certain pattern that reflects a form of hierarchy. This hierarchy can be used to aid science teachers in teaching manipulative skills. The paper will present the hierarchy of these technical skills and discuss these skills specifically from the perspective of lower secondary science teaching and learning. The results of this study have provided an insight on the issue of science manipulative skills that supports the importance of practical work.

Application of hidden Markov model to acquisition of manipulation skills from haptic rendered virtual environment

This paper explores the feasibility of reconstructing human manipulation skills in complex constrained motion by tracing and learning the manipulation performed by the operator. The peg-in-hole insertion problem is used as a case study, which represents a typical constrained motion force sensitive manufacturing task with the attendant issues of jamming, tight clearance and the need for quick assembly times. In the developed system, position and contact force and torque as well as orientation data generated in the haptic rendered virtual environment combined with a priori knowledge about the task are used to identify and learn the skills in the newly demonstrated task. The recorded training data is classified into contact states, which are identified with hidden Markov model (HMM) as human skills. The HMM parameters are obtained from the training data. By evaluating the controller's performance in each contact state from haptic rendered virtual environment, the robot develops the best trajectories to imitate the human behaviour. In this paper the significance of this research project is highlighted and the developed approach and the progress made so far on this project are reported.

Acquisition of manipulation skills from a haptic rendered virtual environment

A new paradigm for programming a robotics manipulator is developed. It is intended that the teaching of the machine will begin with the necessary skills being demonstrated by the human operator in a virtual environment with tactile sensing (haptics).