Investigating how the morphology of a robot arm affects the learnability of aimed throwing

This paper investigates the relationship between the hand design on a robot arm and the learnability of aimed throwing. Aimed throwing is selected as the task because of its importance as a milestone in human evolution, as well as being a task with an unambiguous outcome. The process of designing and building the arm, in addition to the full experimental setup, is described. By varying two different hand designs, the error rate and repeatability are compared to determine how to measure learnability. This metric is then used to compare the two morphologies. The findings of this are that the link between learnability and morphology is not as direct a link as previously believed, which leads to a separate experiment investigating how repeatability affects the learning algorithm within a test environment. This study finds that noise aids with exploration of the action space, however a more repeatable throw allows the algorithm to better learn the task.

Grantor dc:publisher

Oxford Brookes University

Year dc:date

2020

Author dc:creator

• Pierce, Jamie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Rolf, Matthias
• olde Scheper, Tjeerd

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.24384/frsh-q606

OAI identifier oai:identifier

tle:9f46b435-7521-4b90-b9fa-b17d73afd6e2:d6bd9758-527a-46cd-bfe2-c433766e8fca:1