Skip to ContentSkip to Navigation
About us Latest news News News articles

Egbert van der Wal - Object Grasping with the NAO

17 april 2012

With autonomous robots becoming more and more common, the interest in applications of mobile robotics increases. Many applications of robotics include the grasping and manipulation of objects. As many robotic manipulators have several degrees of freedom, controlling these manipulators is not a trivial task. The actuator needs to be guided along a proper trajectory towards the object to grasp, avoiding collisions with other objects and the surface supporting the object. In this project, the problem of learning a proper trajectory towards an object to grasp, located in front of a humanoid robot, the Aldebaran NAO, is solved by using machine learning. Three algorithms were evaluated. Learning from demonstration using a neural network trained on a training set of recorded demonstrations was not capable of learning this task. Using Nearest Neighbor on the same training set yielded much better results in simulation but had more problems picking up objects on the real robot. A form of Reinforcement Learning (RL) tailored to continuous state and action spaces, the Continuous Actor Critic Learning Automaton (CACLA), proved to be an effective way to learn the problem by exploring the action space to obtain a good trajectory in a reasonable amount of time. This algorithm also proved to be robust against the additional complexity of operating on the real robot after being trained in simulation, bridging the reality gap.

Laatst gewijzigd:13 juni 2019 13:40
Deel dit Facebook LinkedIn

Meer nieuws

  • 13 juni 2025

    Noordelijk team ‘Lord of the Roads’ tweede bij RDW Self Driving Challenge

    Het team ‘Lord of the Roads’, waarin studenten van onderwijsinstellingen Noorderpoort, de Hanzehogeschool en de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen samenwerkten is tweede geworden met hun zelf gemaakte auto in de RDW Self Driving Challenge (SDC).

  • 12 juni 2025

    De verliezers van onze huidige landbouw

    Boeren telen tegenwoordig nog maar een beperkt aantal gewassen, en dat heeft nogal wat gevolgen voor de dieren die er leven. Raymond Klaassen onderzoekt welke aanpassingen boeren zouden kunnen doen zodat de grootste verliezers van de huidige...

  • 06 juni 2025

    India-Nederland Hydrogen Valley Fellowship-programma aangekondigd

    Ter gelegenheid van Wereldmilieudag op 5 juni 2025 maakten het Indiase ministerie van Wetenschap en Technologie en de RUG gisteren de start bekend van een partnerschap voor het Hydrogen Valley Fellowship-programma. Dit programma biedt getalenteerde...