From virtual demonstration to real-world manipulation using LSTM and MDN

Understand

Robots assisting the disabled or elderly must perform complex manipulation tasks and must adapt to the home environment and preferences of their user.

• Learning from demonstration is a promising choice, that would allow the non-technical user to teach the robot different tasks.
• However, collecting demonstrations in the home environment of a disabled user is time consuming, disruptive to the comfort of the user, and presents safety challenges.
• It would be desirable to perform the demonstrations in a virtual environment.