Connectionist reinforcement learning of robot control skills

Many robot manipulator tasks are difficult to model explicitly and it is difficult to design and program automatic control algorithms for them. The development, improvement, and application of learning techniques taking advantage of sensory information would enable the acquisition of new robot skills and avoid some of the difficulties of explicit programming. In this paper we use a reinforcement learning approach far on-line generation of skills for control of robot manipulator systems. Instead of generating skills by explicit programming of a perception to action mapping they are generated by trial and error learning, guided by a performance evaluation feedback function. The resulting system may be seen as an anticipatory system that constructs an internal representation model of itself and of its environment. This enables it to identify its current situation and to generate corresponding appropriate commands to the system in order to perform the required skill. The method was applied to the problem of learning a force control skill in which the tool-tip of a robot manipulator must be moved from a free space situation, to a contact state with a compliant surface and having a constant interaction force.