• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.264-266
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• 2009

A skill is defined as the special ability to do something well, especially as acquired by learning and practice. To learn a skill, a Bayesian network model for representing the skill is first learned. We will regard the Bayesian network for a skill as an affordance. We propose a soft Behavior Motivation(BM) switch as a method for ordering affordances to accomplish a task. Then, a skill is constructed as a combination of an affordance and a soft BM switch. To demonstrate the validity of our proposed method, some experiments were performed with GENIBO(Pet robot) performing a task using skills of Search-a-target-object, Approach-a-target-object, Push-up-in front of -a-target-object.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.7-16
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• 2009

A robot must be able to generate various skills to achieve given tasks intelligently and reasonably. The robot must first learn affordances to generate the skills. An affordance is defined as qualities of objects or environments that induce actions. Affordances can be usefully used to generate skills. Most tasks require sequential and goal-oriented behaviors. However, it is usually difficult to accomplish such tasks with affordances alone. To accomplish such tasks, a skill is constructed with an affordance and a soft behavioral motivation switch for reflecting goal-oriented elements. A skill calculates a behavioral motivation as a combination of both presently perceived information and goal-oriented elements. Here, a behavioral motivation is the internal condition that activates a goal-oriented behavior. In addition, a robot must be able to execute sequential behaviors. We construct skill networks by using generated skills that make action selection feasible to accomplish a task. A robot can select sequential and a goal-oriented behaviors using the skill network. For this, we will first propose a method for modeling and learning Bayesian networks that are used to generate affordances. To select sequential and goal-oriented behaviors, we construct skills using affordances and soft behavioral motivation switches. We also propose a method to generate the skill networks using the skills to execute given tasks. Finally, we will propose action-selection-mechanism to select sequential and goal-oriented behaviors using the skill network. To demonstrate the validity of our proposed methods, "Searching-for-a-target-object", "Approaching-a-target-object", "Sniffing-a-target-object", and "Kicking-a-target-object" affordances have been learned with GENIBO (pet robot) based on the human teaching method. Some experiments have also been performed with GENIBO using the skills and the skill networks.