Brain-Body-Task Co-Adaptation can Improve Autonomous Learning and Speed of Bipedal Walking

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Urbina-Meléndez, Darío, Azadjou, Hesam, Valero-Cuevas, Francisco J.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Urbina-Meléndez, Darío
Azadjou, Hesam
Valero-Cuevas, Francisco J.
author_facet Urbina-Meléndez, Darío
Azadjou, Hesam
Valero-Cuevas, Francisco J.
contents Inspired by animals that co-adapt their brain and body to interact with the environment, we present a tendon-driven and over-actuated (i.e., n joint, n+1 actuators) bipedal robot that (i) exploits its backdrivable mechanical properties to manage body-environment interactions without explicit control, and (ii) uses a simple 3-layer neural network to learn to walk after only 2 minutes of 'natural' motor babbling (i.e., an exploration strategy that is compatible with leg and task dynamics; akin to childsplay). This brain-body collaboration first learns to produce feet cyclical movements 'in air' and, without further tuning, can produce locomotion when the biped is lowered to be in slight contact with the ground. In contrast, training with 2 minutes of 'naive' motor babbling (i.e., an exploration strategy that ignores leg task dynamics), does not produce consistent cyclical movements 'in air', and produces erratic movements and no locomotion when in slight contact with the ground. When further lowering the biped and making the desired leg trajectories reach 1cm below ground (causing the desired-vs-obtained trajectories error to be unavoidable), cyclical movements based on either natural or naive babbling presented almost equally persistent trends, and locomotion emerged with naive babbling. Therefore, we show how continual learning of walking in unforeseen circumstances can be driven by continual physical adaptation rooted in the backdrivable properties of the plant and enhanced by exploration strategies that exploit plant dynamics. Our studies also demonstrate that the bio-inspired codesign and co-adaptations of limbs and control strategies can produce locomotion without explicit control of trajectory errors.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_02387
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Brain-Body-Task Co-Adaptation can Improve Autonomous Learning and Speed of Bipedal Walking
Urbina-Meléndez, Darío
Azadjou, Hesam
Valero-Cuevas, Francisco J.
Robotics
Machine Learning
Inspired by animals that co-adapt their brain and body to interact with the environment, we present a tendon-driven and over-actuated (i.e., n joint, n+1 actuators) bipedal robot that (i) exploits its backdrivable mechanical properties to manage body-environment interactions without explicit control, and (ii) uses a simple 3-layer neural network to learn to walk after only 2 minutes of 'natural' motor babbling (i.e., an exploration strategy that is compatible with leg and task dynamics; akin to childsplay). This brain-body collaboration first learns to produce feet cyclical movements 'in air' and, without further tuning, can produce locomotion when the biped is lowered to be in slight contact with the ground. In contrast, training with 2 minutes of 'naive' motor babbling (i.e., an exploration strategy that ignores leg task dynamics), does not produce consistent cyclical movements 'in air', and produces erratic movements and no locomotion when in slight contact with the ground. When further lowering the biped and making the desired leg trajectories reach 1cm below ground (causing the desired-vs-obtained trajectories error to be unavoidable), cyclical movements based on either natural or naive babbling presented almost equally persistent trends, and locomotion emerged with naive babbling. Therefore, we show how continual learning of walking in unforeseen circumstances can be driven by continual physical adaptation rooted in the backdrivable properties of the plant and enhanced by exploration strategies that exploit plant dynamics. Our studies also demonstrate that the bio-inspired codesign and co-adaptations of limbs and control strategies can produce locomotion without explicit control of trajectory errors.
title Brain-Body-Task Co-Adaptation can Improve Autonomous Learning and Speed of Bipedal Walking
topic Robotics
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.02387