This paper presents a novel approach for robot instruction for assembly tasks. We consider that robot programming can be made more efficient, precise and intuitive if we leverage the advantages of complementary approaches such as learning from demonstration, learning from feedback and knowledge transfer. Starting from low-level demonstrations of assembly tasks, the system is able to extract a high-level relational plan of the task. A graphical user interface (GUI) allows then the user to iteratively correct the acquired knowledge by refining high-level plans, and low-level geometrical knowledge of the task. This combination leads to a faster programming phase, more precise than just demonstrations, and more intuitive than just through a GUI. A final process allows to reuse high-level task knowledge for similar tasks in a transfer learning fashion. Finally we present a user study illustrating the advantages of this approach.

In human-robot collaboration, multi-agent domains, or single-robot manipulation with multiple end-effectors, the activities of the involved parties are naturally concurrent. Such domains are also naturally relational as they involve objects, multiple agents, and models should generalize over objects and agents. We propose a novel formalization of relational concurrent activity processes that allows us to transfer methods from standard relational MDPs, such as Monte-Carlo planning and learning from demonstration, to concurrent cooperation domains. We formally compare the formulation to previous propositional models of concurrent decision making and demonstrate planning and learning from demonstration methods on a real-world human-robot assembly task.

We present a novel method to learn human preferences during, and for, the execution of concurrent joint humanrobot tasks. We consider tasks realized by a team of a human operator and a robot helper that should adapt to the human's task execution preferences. Different human operators can have different abilities, experiences, and personal preferences, so that a particular allocation of activities in the team is preferred over another. We cast the behavior of concurrent multi-agent cooperation as a semi Markov Decision Process and show how to model and learn human preferences over the team behavior. After proposing two different interactive learning algorithms, we evaluate them and show that the system can effectively learn and adapt to human preferences.

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This paper presents a study on the impact of autonomy in the context of human-robot collaboration. We consider two conditions: i) a semi-autonomous robot that decides when to execute a supporting action, and ii) a support robot that has to be instructed of each action on a collaborative task. The semi-autonomous robot gradually learns how to support the human through experience. We found that users prefer the semi-autonomous robot and that the behavior was closer to their expectations despite them being more afraid of it. We also found that even if users noticed the robot was learning in one case, they wanted more autonomy in both conditions.