C-LEARN: Learning geometric constraints from demonstrations for multi-step manipulation in shared autonomy

Abstract

Learning from demonstrations has been shown to be a successful method for non-experts to teach manipulation tasks to robots. These methods typically build generative models from demonstrations and then use regression to reproduce skills. However, this approach has limitations to capture hard geometric constraints imposed by the task. On the other hand, while sampling and optimization-based motion planners exist that reason about geometric constraints, these are typically carefully hand-crafted by an expert. To address this technical gap, we contribute with C-LEARN, a method that learns multi-step manipulation tasks from demonstrations as a sequence of keyframes and a set of geometric constraints. The system builds a knowledge base for reaching and grasping objects, which is then leveraged to learn multi-step tasks from a single demonstration. C-LEARN supports multi-step tasks with multiple end effectors; reasons about SE(3) volumetric and CAD constraints, such as the need for two axes to be parallel; and offers a principled way to transfer skills between robots with different kinematics. We embed the execution of the learned tasks within a shared autonomy framework, and evaluate our approach by analyzing the success rate when performing physical tasks with a dual-arm Optimas robot, comparing the contribution of different constraints models, and demonstrating the ability of C-LEARN to transfer learned tasks by performing them with a legged dual-arm Atlas robot in simulation.