Implementation of advanced manipulation tasks on humanoids through kinesthetic teaching

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a software framework for programming by demonstration (PbD) using kinesthetic teaching. A Personal Robot 2 (PR2) robot platform was used to demonstrate teaching effectiveness and conduct dual arm manipulation operations during a wine pouring demonstration. During the teaching process, an operator directs the PR2 arms to execute complex joint trajectories leading to desired handling of objects in joint or Cartesian space. The user can efficiently store and playback programmed motions using Extensible Markup Language (XML) parsing. We present repeatable wine pouring motion results that were executed by the PR2 during a demo for several thousand guests at a public event.