Multimodal imitation using self-learned sensorimotor representations

Abstract

Although many tasks intrinsically involve multiple modalities, often only data from a single modality are used to improve complex robots acquisition of new skills. We present a method to equip robots with multimodal learning skills to achieve multimodal imitation on-the-fly on multiple concurrent task spaces, including vision, touch and proprioception, only using self-learned multimodal sensorimotor relations, without the need of solving inverse kinematic problems or explicit analytical models formulation. We evaluate the proposed method on a humanoid iCub robot learning to interact with a piano keyboard and imitating a human demonstration. Since no assumptions are made on the kinematic structure of the robot, the method can be also applied to different robotic platforms.