Abstract
In this chapter, we argue that a single intrinsic motivation function for affordance discovery can guide long-term learning in robot systems. To these ends, we provide a novel definition of “affordance” as the latent potential for the closed-loop control of environmental stimuli perceived by sensors. Specifically, the proposed intrinsic motivation function rewards the discovery of such control affordances. We will demonstrate how this function has been used by a humanoid robot to learn a number of general purpose control skills that address many different tasks. These skills, for example, include strategies for finding, grasping, and placing simple objects. We further show how this same intrinsic reward function is used to direct the robot to build stable models of when the environment affords these skills.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barto, A., Singh, S, Chentanez, N.: Intrinsically motivated learning of hierarchical collections of skills. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), La Jolla, CA, USA October (2004)
Berry, D.A., Fristedt, B.: Bandit problems: Sequential allocation of experiments. In: Monographs on Statistics and Applied Probability, vol. viii + 275. Chapman & Hall, London (1985)
Chemero, A.: An outline of a theory of affordances. Ecol. Psychol. 15(3), 181–195 (2003)
Connolly, C., Grupen, R.: Nonholonomic path planning using harmonic functions. Technical Report 94-50, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1994)
Detry, R., Popovic, M., Touati, Y., Baseski, E., Krüger, N, Piater, J.: Autonomous learning of object-specific grasp affordance densities. In: ICRA 2009 Workshop Approaches to Sensorimotor Learning on Humanoid Robots, Kobe, Japan (2009)
Festinger, L.: A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Evanston, Row, Peterson (1957)
Fitzpatrick, P., Metta, G., Natale, L., Rao, S., Sandini, G.: Learning about objects through action: Initial steps towards artificial cognition. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Taipei, Taiwan (2003)
Gibson, J.J.: The theory of affordances. In: Perceiving, Acting and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology, pp. 67–82. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale (1977)
Harlow, H.: Learning and satiation of response in intrinsically motivated complex puzzle performances by monkeys. J. Comp. Psychol. Psychol. 43, 289–294 (1950)
Hart, S.: The Development of Hierarchical Knowledge in Robot Systems. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (2009a)
Hart, S.: An intrinsic reward for affordance exploration. In: Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), Shanghai, China (2009b)
Hart, S., Grupen, R.: Natural task decomposition with intrinsic potential fields. In: Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), San Diego, CA (2007)
Hart, S., Grupen, R.: Learning generalizable control programs. IEEE Trans. Auton. Mental Dev. 3(3), 216–231 (2011)
Hart, S., Sen, S., Grupen, R.: Generalization and transfer in robot control. In: 8th International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics (Epirob08), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK (2008a)
Hart, S., Sen, S., Grupen, R.: Intrinsically motivated hierarchical manipulation. In: Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE Conference on Robots and Automation (ICRA), Pasadena, CA (2008b)
Herrmann, J., Pawelzik, K., Geisel, T.: Learning predictive representations. Neurocomputing 32–33, 785–791 (2000)
Huang, X., Weng, J.: Novelty and reinforcement learning in the value system of developmental robots. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems. Edinburgh, Scotland (2002)
Huber, M., Grupen, R.: A hybrid discrete dynamic systems approach to robot control. Technical Report 96-43, Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst (1996)
Huber, M., MacDonald, W, Grupen, R.: A control basis for multilegged walking. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Robotics and Automation. IEEE, Minneapolis, MN, USA (1996)
Hull, C.: Principles of Behavior: An Introduction to Behavior Theory. Appleton-Century-Croft, New York (1943)
Hunt, H.: Intrinsic motivation and its role in psychological development. Nebraska Symp. Motiv. 13, 189–282 (1965)
Kagan, J.: Motives and development. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 22, 51–66 (1972)
Koditschek, D., Rimon, E.: Robot navigation functions on manifolds with boundary. Adv. Appl. Math. 11(4), 412–442 (1990)
Kraft, D., Pugeault, N., Baseski, E., Popović, M., Kragic, D., Kalkan, S., Wörgötter, F, Krüger, N.: Birth of the object: Detection of objectness and extraction of shape through object action complexes. In: Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Cognitive Systems, Karlsruhe, DE (2008)
Krüger, N., Geib, C., Piater, J., Petrick, R., Steedman, M., Wörgötter, F., Ude, A., Asfour, T., Kraft, D., Omrcen, D., Agostini, A, Dillmann, R.: Object-action complexes: Grounded abstractions of sensori-motor processes. Robot. Auton. Syst. 59(10), 740–757 (2011)
Krüger, N., Piater, J., Wörgötter, F., Geib, C., Petrick, R., Steedman, M., Ude, A., Asfour, T., Kraft, D., Omrcen, D., Hommel, B., Agostino, A., Kragic, D., Eklundh, J., Kruger, V, Dillmann, R.: A formal definition of object action complexes and examples at different levels of the process hierarchy. http://www.paco-plus.org (2009)
Modayil, J., Kupiers, B.: Autonomous development of a grounded object ontology by a learning robot. In: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-07), Vancouver, British Columbia (2007)
Montgomery, K.: The role of exploratory drive in learning. J. Comp. Psychol. Psychol. 47, 60–64 (1954)
Nakamura, Y.: Advanced Robotics: Redundancy and Optimization. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1991)
Oudeyer, P., Kaplan, F.: What is intrinsic motivation? a typology of computational approaches. Front. Neurorobot. 1(2) (2007)
Oudeyer, P., Kaplan, F, Hafner, V.V.: Intrinsic motivation systems for autonomous mental development. IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput. 11, 265–286 (2007)
Piaget, J.: The Origins of Intelligence in Childhood. International Universities Press, New York (1952)
Platt, R., Fagg, A.H, Grupen, R.A.: Null space grasp control: Theory and experiments. IEEE Trans. Robot. Autom. 26, 282–295 (2010)
Quinlan, J.: C4.5: Programs for Machine Learning. Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo (1993)
Rimon, E., Koditschek, D.: Exact robot navigation using artificial potential functions. IEEE Trans. Robot. Autom. 8(5), 501–518 (1992)
Şahin, E., Çakmak, M., Doǧar, M., Uǧur, E, Üçoluk, G.: To afford or not to afford: A formalization of affordances toward affordance-based robot control. Adap. Behav. 4(15), 447–472 (2007)
Schmidhuber, J.: Adaptive curiosity and adaptive confidence. Technical Report FKI-149-91, Institut fur Informatik, Technische Universitat Munchen (1991)
Stoytchev, A.: Toward learning the binding affordances of objects: A behavior-grounded approach. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Developmental Robotics. Stanford University, Stanford, CA (2005)
Sutton, R., Barto, A.: Reinforcement Learning. MIT, Cambridge (1998)
Uǧur, E., Oztop, E, Şahin, E.: Learning object affordances for planning. In: ICRA 2009 Workshop Approaches to Sensorimotor Learning on Humanoid Robots, Kobe, Japan (2009)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hart, S., Grupen, R. (2013). Intrinsically Motivated Affordance Discovery and Modeling. In: Baldassarre, G., Mirolli, M. (eds) Intrinsically Motivated Learning in Natural and Artificial Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32375-1_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32375-1_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32374-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32375-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)