Abstraction in Recognition to Solve the Correspondence Problem for Robot Imitation

A considerable part of the imitation problem is nding mechanisms that link the recognition of actions that are being demonstrated to the execution of the same actions by the imitator. In a situation where a human is instructing a robot, the problem is made more complicated by the dierence in morphology. In this paper we present an imitation framework that allows a robot to recognise and imitate object-directed actions performed by a human demonstrator by solving the correspondence problem. The recog- nition is achieved using an abstraction mechanism that focuses on the features of the demonstra- tion that are important to the imitator. The abstraction mechanism is applied to experimen- tal scenarios in which a robot imitates human- demonstrated tasks of transporting objects be- tween tables.