Reinforcement learning has emerged as a promising methodology for training robot controllers. However, most results have been limited to simulation due to the need for a large number of samples and the lack of automated-yet-safe data collection methods. Model-based reinforcement learning methods provide an avenue to circumvent these challenges, but the traditional concern has been the mismatch ...

The orbicularis oris muscle plays a role in the production of primate facial expressions and vocalizations, nutrient intake, and in some non-human primates it is used as a prehensile, manipulative tool. As the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is the closest living relative of humans, a comparison of the orbicularis oris muscle between these species may increase our understanding of the morphologica...

In this paper, we propose a multi-task learning from demonstration method that works using raw images as input to autonomously accomplish a wide variety of tasks in the real world using a low-cost robotic arm. The controller is a single recurrent neural network that can generate robot arm trajectories to perform different manipulation tasks. In order to learn complex skills from relatively few ...

The binturong (Arctictis binturong) is a large, arboreal viverrid (subfamily Paradoxurinae) with a coat of long coarse hair and a prehensile tail that inhabits the dense forests of Southeast Asia, Palawan, Sumatra, Java, and Borneo. This species, as with most Carnivora, possesses paired glands that open on both sides of the anus (Story, 1945). These anal glands are used by both sexes to scent-m...

Prehensile-tailed porcupines (Coendou prehensilis), like other rodents, lack external sexual traits, making it difficult to non-invasively determine their gender. By exploiting genetic differences between the X and the Y chromosome, we developed a simple genetic test to determine the gender of Coendous from shed quills. We Sanger sequenced a short portion (195 bp) of the zinc finger protein gen...

A new feature extraction method based on five moments applied to three wavelet transform sequences has been proposed and used in classification of prehensile surface EMG patterns. The new method has essentially extended the Englehart's discrete wavelet transform and wavelet packet transform by introducing more efficient feature reduction method that also offered better generalization. The appro...

In recent years, the spread of data-driven approaches for robotic grasp synthesis has come with increasing need reliable datasets, which can be built e.g. through video labelling. To this goal, it is important to define suitable rules characterize main human types, easily identifying them in streams. work, we present a novel taxonomy that builds upon related state art, but specifically thought ...

This paper describes a system in which multiple robots cooperate to move multiple objects such as groups of boxes using a constrained prehensile manipulation mode, by wrapping ropes around them. The system consists of three manipulation skills: tieing ropes around objects, affecting rotations using a flossing manipulation gait, and affecting translations using a ratcheting manipulation gait. We...

Vertebrates have repeatedly filled and partitioned the terrestrial ecosystem, and have been able to occupy new, previously unexplored habitats throughout their history on land. The arboreal ecospace is particularly important in vertebrate evolution because it provides new food resources and protection from large ground-dwelling predators. We investigated the skeletal anatomy of the Late Permian...