A vision-guided multi-robot cooperation framework for learning-by-demonstration and task reproduction

This paper presents a vision-based learning-by-demonstration approach for multi-robot manipulation. With this method, a vision system is involved in both the task demonstration and reproduction stages, and the speed and accuracy of the task reproduction are adapted according to the context of the demonstration. An expert first demonstrates how to use tools to perform a task, while the tool motion is observed using a vision system. The demonstrations are then encoded using a statistical model to generate a reference motion trajectory. Equipped with the same tools and the learned model, the robot is guided by vision to reproduce the task. The task performance was evaluated in terms of both accuracy and speed. However, simply increasing the robot's speed could decrease the reproduction accuracy. To this end, a dual-rate Kalman filter is employed to compensate for latency between the robot and vision system. More importantly, the robot speed is adapted according to the learned motion model. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by performing two tasks: a trajectory reproduction task and a bimanual sewing task. We show that using our vision-based approach, the robots can conduct effective learning by demonstrations and perform accurate and fast task reproduction. The proposed approach is generalisable to other manipulation tasks, where bimanual or multi-robot cooperation is required.