Understanding joint range of motion development in robotic learning

Joint Range of Motion (JROM) development has been shown to facilitate learning motor control in human beings. This developmental strategy has been applied in robotics to improve learning performance with different outcomes: sometimes it is favourable, others irrelevant, and others, even detrimental. The reasons that underpin this variability in the results are still not well understood. In this paper, we seek to better understand the principles underlying the application of JROM based morphological development to make its use more straightforward. To this end, empirical studies were carried out over two representative use cases: quadruped and bipedal robot morphologies learning to walk. Different parameters of the application of JROM development (morphological configuration, JROM developmental strategy, etc.) have been evaluated to elucidate their effects over learning. The results show that there are significant connections between the reduction of the motor space induced by JROM and the way the exploration and exploitation of the solution space is carried out by the learning algorithm, and the performance achieved. Through these connections, we have identified a set of conditions that must be satisfied for JROM development to be effective as a tool for learning improvement.