text: Visual features can help predict if a manipulation behavior will succeed at a given location. For example, the success of a behavior that flips light switches depends on the location of the switch. Within this paper, we present methods that enable a mobile manipulator to autonomously learn a function that takes an RGB image and a registered 3D point cloud as input and returns a 3D location at which a manipulation behavior is likely to succeed. Given a pair of manipulation behaviors that can change the state of the world between two sets (e.g., light switch up and light switch down), classifiers that detect when each behavior has been successful, and an initial hint as to where one of the behaviors will be successful, the robot autonomously trains a pair of support vector machine (SVM) classifiers by trying out the behaviors at locations in the world and observing the results. When an image feature vector associated with a 3D location is provided as input to one of the SVMs, the SVM predicts if the associated manipulation behavior will be successful at the 3D location. To evaluate our approach, we performed experiments with a PR2 robot from Willow Garage in a simulated home using behaviors that flip a light switch, push a rocker-type light switch, and operate a drawer. By using active learning, the robot efficiently learned SVMs that enabled it to consistently succeed at these tasks. After training, the robot also continued to learn in order to adapt in the event of failure.
  @cite_63: Presented at RSS 2011 Workshop on Mobile Manipulation: Learning to Manipulate, June 27, 2011, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA.
summary: There is a significant body of work on robots learning to manipulate autonomously, robots learning to perceive, perception for manipulation that exploits task structure, and active learning methods for using labeling efforts efficiently. In this section, we discuss the relationship between our work and current learning methods as well as work that has demonstrated the effectiveness of using task-relevant cues for perception in human environments. The research we present in this paper builds on our earlier workshop publication @cite_63 .