Many tasks, such as typing a password, are decomposed into a sequence of subtasks that can be accomplished in many ways. Behavior that accomplishes subtasks in ways that are influenced by the overall task is often described as "skilled" and exhibits coarticulation. Many accounts of coarticulation use search methods that are informed by representations of objectives that define skilled. While th...

We present a method for autonomous learning of dextrous manipulation skills with mul-tiingered robot hands. We use heuristics derived from observations made on human hands to reduce the degrees of freedom of the task and make learning tractable. Our approach consists of learning and storing a few basic manipulation primitives for a few prototypi-cal objects and then using an associative memory ...

This abstract summarizes recent research on the autonomous acquisition of transferrable manipulation skills. We describe a robot system that learns to sequence a set of innate controllers to solve a task, and then extracts transferrable manipulation skills from the resulting solution. Using the extracted skills, the robot is able to significantly reduce the time required to discover the solutio...

OBJECTIVE This study examined the construct validity of the In-Hand Manipulation Test (IMT) by assessing the test's ability to discriminate between samples of children with and without known fine motor problems. METHOD The IMT was administered to 55 children without known fine motor problems and 24 children with spastic diplegia who had mild to moderate fine motor problems. Construct validity...

The RoboCup@Home league is a benchmark for domestic service robot systems. It evaluates approaches to mobile manipulation and human-robot interaction by testing integrated systems. In this article, we detail the contributions of our team NimbRo, with which we won the RoboCup@Home competition in 2011. We demonstrated novel capabilities in the league such as real-time tabletop segmentation, flexi...

Image manipulation using computer technology has become a basic skill required in various graphics-dependent industries . such as advertising, and the print and electronic media, and for specialist use in institutions for in-house and on-line publishing and the creation of Web pages. The 'seamless' alteration of photographs and other visual images made possible by computer technology has allowe...

We describ e a system that integrates real time com puter vision with a sensorless gripper to provide closed loop feedback control for grasping and manipulation tasks Many hand eye coordination skills can be thought of as sensory control loops where specialized reasoning has been embodied as a feedback or control path in the loop s construction Our framework cap tures the essence of these hand ...