Robot Learning from Demonstration

Synonyms

Imitation learning; Programming by demonstration

Definition

Robot Learning from Demonstration is a subarea of robotics focused on algorithms for learning robot behaviors based on example demonstrations performed by a teacher. Learning from Demonstration techniques are inspired by the human and animal ability to learn from others in social contexts. During training, the robot records the actions of a teacher, typically a human. Based on this data, the algorithm learns a generalized policy, a mapping from world states to actions, that allows it to reproduce the teacher’s behavior. Demonstration learning algorithms are intended to be easier and faster to use than traditional programming methods and do not require the teacher to have programming knowledge.

Theoretical Background

Formally, the robot’s task can be represented by the set of states S, actions A, and the probabilistic transition function \(T\left( {s'\left| {s,\,a} \right.} \right):\,S \times A \times S \to \left[...