Leveraging on a virtual environment for robot programming by demonstration

The Programming by Demonstration paradigm promises to reduce the complexity of robot programming. Its aim is to let robot systems learn new behaviors from a human operator demonstration. In this paper, we argue that while providing demonstrations in the real environment enables teaching of general tasks, for tasks whose essential features are known a priori demonstrating in a virtual environment may improve efficiency and reduce trainer's fatigue. We next describe a prototype system supporting Programming by Demonstration in a virtual environment and we report results obtained exploiting simple virtual tactile fixtures in pick-and-place tasks.