Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Skill Acquisition in Humans and Robots

Objective

Society is rapidly opening its doors to robots in our daily life with autonomous vehicles, rehabilitation devices and autonomous appliances. These robots will face unexpected changes in their environment, to which they will have to react immediately and appropriately. Even though robots exceed largely humans’ precision and speed of computation, they are far from matching humans’ capacity to adapt rapidly to unexpected changes. In the past decades, robotics has made leaps forward in the design of increasingly complex robotic platforms to meet these challenges. In this endeavour, it has benefited from advances in optimization for solving high-dimensional constrained problems and in machine learning (ML) to analyse vast amounts of data. These methods are powerful for planning in slow-paced tasks and when the environment is known. This project addresses a growing need for methods that show fast and on-line reactivity.
We design controllers that can plan at run time and adapt to new environmental constraints. We offer a novel approach to robot learning that follows stages of skill acquisition in humans. To inform modelling, we conduct a longitudinal study of the acquisition of dexterous bimanual skills in craftsmanship. We study how humans exploit task uncertainty to overcome their sensory-motor noise, and how humans learn bimanual synergies to reduce the control variables. This study informs the design of novel learning strategies for robots that exploit failures as much as successes. We combine planning and ML to learn feasible control laws, retrievable at run time with no need for further optimization. We exploit properties of dynamical systems (DS), which have received little attention in robot control, and use ML to identify characteristics of DS, in ways that were not explored to date. The approach is assessed in live demonstrations of coordinated adaptation of a multi-arm/hand robotic system engaged in a fast-paced industrial task, in the presence of humans.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2016-ADG

See all projects funded under this call

Host institution

ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FEDERALE DE LAUSANNE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 492 036,00
Address
BATIMENT CE 3316 STATION 1
1015 LAUSANNE
Switzerland

See on map

Region
Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera Région lémanique Vaud
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 492 036,00

Beneficiaries (1)

My booklet 0 0