Free-floating panel intervention by means of learning by demonstration

Abstract

Recent efforts in the field of intervention-autonomous underwater vehicles (I-AUVs) have started to show promising results in simple manipulation tasks. However, there is still a long way to go to reach the complexity of the tasks carried out by ROV pilots. This paper proposes an intervention framework based on Learning by Demonstration (LbD) techniques in order to easily acquire the manipulation skills of a pilot and be able to reproduce similar tasks autonomously. We describe the learning algorithm as well as its interplay with the rest of the modules (navigation, perception, control) that take part in the proposed framework. We show results on a free-floating valve turning task, using Girona 500 AUV equipped with a manipulator, a passive gripper, a force/torque sensor, a camera and a haptic device to perform the demonstrations. Obtained results show the feasibility of the LbD algorithm to perform autonomous intervention even under the presence of perturbations.