A Biologically Inspired Program-Level Imitation Approach for Robots

Robots may learn new skills from humans to better assist us with everyday tasks. We propose a novel, biologically inspired imitation approach to enable robots to understand and perform complex actions using high-level programs that incorporate sequential regularities between sub-goals a robot can recognize and physically achieve. To learn a new task, human-provided demonstrations—obtained by a robot through different modalities such as kinesthetic teaching or behavioural observation—are processed by an algorithm to discover multiple possible arrangements of sub-goals that achieve the task goal. When performing the task, the robot first evaluates the available sequences in the program based on user-defined criteria, through mental simulation of the real task, to find the optimal sequence of actions. The selected sequence is then executed using the hierarchical structure of actions embedded in the program. We implemented the proposed learning architecture on an iCub humanoid robot and evaluated the effectiveness of the system in multiple scenarios. Our approach accommodates variations in human teaching styles and is expected to help robots perform tasks with greater flexibility and efficiency, opening the way to more adaptable and intelligent robots.