Ex-DoF: Expansion of Action Degree-of-Freedom with Virtual Camera Rotation for Omnidirectional Image

Abstract

Inter-robot transfer of training data is a little explored topic in learning- and vision-based robot control. Here we propose a transfer method from a robot with a lower Degree-of-Freedom (DoF) to one with a higher DoF utilizing the omnidirectional camera image. The virtual rotation of the robot camera enables data augmentation in this transfer learning process. As an experimental demonstration, a vision-based control policy for a 6- DoF robot is trained using a dataset collected by a wheeled ground robot with only three DoFs. Towards the application of robotic manipulations, we also demonstrate a control system of a 6- DoF arm robot using multiple policies with different fields of view to enable object reaching tasks.