Humanoid robots learn motor skills from human infant development scales
Validation of Human Motor Development Scales with Humanoid Robots
Robotics
Summary
Teaching robots to move like babies learn to move can be tricky because baby development happens in stages with specific steps. The authors checked which baby motor skill guides helped a robot learn basic motions like standing and walking. They found that most guides worked well except one, which missed some important steps. By adding those steps, the robot could learn just as well as with the others.
What this means in practice
- •For roboticists: Train humanoid robots to acquire motor skills using validated human infant development milestones as learning guides.
- •For physical therapy device developers: Design motor skill progression models for assistive robots to support human motor development rehabilitation.
Authors
Fanxing Meng, Jing Xiao
Abstract
We investigate how humanoid robots can learn a series of motor skills defined by human infant motor development scales, and we evaluate which scales are comprehensive enough to serve as self-contained guides for developing gross motor skills up to standing and walking. We represent each motor development scale as a developmental graph that guides the training of a humanoid robot. We then apply this graph within a reinforcement learning framework so that the robot learns skills following the natural phases of human motor development described by the scale. Our work demonstrates that graphs derived from three out of four popular pediatric motor scales can successfully guide humanoid robots to develop these skills. The fourth scale misses some intermediate milestones that the other scales have, which causes some failures. After adding a missing milestone in its graph, it also enables the robot to develop those skills successfully.