Invited Talk at University Lübeck

Title: Neural models for robot motor skill learning.

Abstract:

The challenges in understanding human motor control, in brain-machine interfaces

and anthropomorphic robotics are currently converging. Modern anthropomorphic

robots with their compliant actuators and various types of sensors (e.g., depth

and vision cameras, tactile fingertips, full-body skin, proprioception) have

reached the perceptuomotor complexity faced in human motor control and learning.

While outstanding robotic and prosthetic devices exist, current brain machine

interfaces (BMIs) and robot learning methods have not yet reached the required

autonomy and performance needed to enter daily life.

For truly autonomous robotic and prosthetic devices four major challenges have

to be addressed. These fields can be grouped into the major area of

Neurorobotics and are, (1) the decomposability of complex motor skills into

basic primitives organized in complex architectures, (2) the ability to learn

from partial observable noisy observations of inhomogeneous high-dimensional

sensor data, (3) the learning of abstract features, generalizable models and

transferable policies from human demonstrations, sparse rewards and through

active learning, and (4), accurate predictions of self-motions, object dynamics

and of humans movements for assisting and cooperating autonomous systems.

My contributions are probabilistic computational models that can be trained from

high-dimensional input streams of neural and artificial data (e.g., action

potentials, movement kinematics, joint forces, EMG signals, tactile readings).

The learned models are evaluated in human motor adaptation experiments and in

robot reaching and balancing tasks. These probabilistic models can be

co-activated and sequenced in time as movement primitives and can be modulated

by a small set of control parameters to generalize to new tasks. In neural

network implementations forward and inverse kinematic models are learned

simultaneously and used to generate movement plans in a compliant humanoid

robot. The neural models capture the correlations of the input and can forecast

self-motions or co-workers intentions as demonstrated in a recent human

adaptation experiment which showed that postural control precedes and predicts

volitional motor control.

Invited Talk at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), Germany

Learning to Plan through Reinforcement Learning in Spiking Neural Networks

Abstract: Movement planing is a fundamental skill that is involved in many human motor control tasks. While the hippocampus plays a central role, the functional principles underlying planning are largely unexplored. In this talk, I present a computational model for planning that is derived from theoretical principles of the probabilistic inference framework. Optimal learning rules are inferred and links to the widely used machine learning techniques expectation maximization and policy search are established. As computational model for hippocampal sweeps, we show that the network dynamics are qualitatively similar to transient firing patterns during planning and foraging in the hippocampus of awake behaving rats. In robotic tasks, non-Gaussian hard constraints are modeled, dozens of movement plans are simulated in parallel, and forward and inverse kinematic models are learned simultaneously through interactions with the environment.

Invited Talk at the Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI), Zurich, Switzerland

Probabilistic computational models of human motor control for robot learning.

Invited Talk at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany

Neural models for brain-machine interfaces and anthropomorphic robotics

Journal Paper Accepted at Nature Publishing Group: Scientific Reports.

Rueckert, Elmar; Camernik, Jernej; Peters, Jan; Babic, Jan

Probabilistic Movement Models Show that Postural Control Precedes and Predicts Volitional Motor Control

Nature Publishing Group: Scientific Reports, 6 (28455), 2016.

Journal Paper Accepted at Nature Publishing Group: Scientific Reports.

Rueckert, Elmar; Kappel, David; Tanneberg, Daniel; Pecevski, Dejan; Peters, Jan

Recurrent Spiking Networks Solve Planning Tasks

Nature Publishing Group: Scientific Reports, 6 (21142), 2016.

Postdoctoral fellow at IAS, Darmstadt

Elmar Rueckert joined the Autonomous Systems Labs of Prof. Jan Peters as Post-Doc in March 2014.

Ph.D. Defense – Summa Cum Laude (with honors).

At the Technical University Graz, Austria with Prof. Wolfgang Maass.

Two Journal Papers Accepted at Frontiers in Computational Neurosciene

Rueckert, Elmar; d’Avella, Andrea
Learned parametrized dynamic movement primitives with shared synergies for controlling robotic and musculoskeletal systems

Rueckert, Elmar; Neumann, Gerhard; Toussaint, Marc; Maass, Wolfgang
Learned graphical models for probabilistic planning provide a new class of movement primitives

M.Sc. defense – Summa Cum Laude (with honors).

At the technical University Graz with Prof. Horst Bischof.