Teleoperation has been a key drive for robotics research as many tasks need to be performed remotely. These tasks occur in a broad application domain, ranging from deep sea to outer space, and are typical in environments that are dangerous and/or hard to reach. Traditionally, during teleoperation, the robot motion is directly controlled by the operator. In such systems, the performance of the o...

We present a formal approach for combining programming by demonstration (PbD) with programming by instruction (PbI)—a largely unsolved problem. Our solution is based on the integration of two successful formalisms: version space algebras and the logic programming language Golog. Version space algebras have been successfully applied to programming by demonstration. Intuitively, a version space d...

Robots have become significantly more powerful and intelligent over the last decade, and are moving in to more service oriented roles. As a result robots will more often be used by people with minimal technical skills and so there is a need for easier to use and more flexible programming systems. This paper reviews the current state of the art in robot programming systems. A distinction is made...

This chapter presents a programming-by-demonstration (PBD) approach to Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The aim of our approach is to enable non-specialist users to avail themselves of the software without having to resort to the help of expert users. We begin with a story of one group of non-specialist users who encountered difficulty with GIS software. Next we summarize findings of a s...

Existing approaches to Robot Programming by Demonstration (PbD) require multiple demonstrations to capture task information that lets robots generalize to unseen situations. However, providing these demonstrations is cumbersome for endusers. In addition, users who are not familiar with the system often fail to demonstrate sufficiently varied demonstrations. We propose an alternative PbD framewo...

Performing manipulation tasks interactively in real environments requires a high degree of accuracy and stability. At the same time, when one cannot assume a fully deterministic and static environment, one must endow the robot with the ability to react rapidly to sudden changes in the environment. These considerations make the task of reach and grasp difficult to deal with. We follow a programm...