Bücher von Sebastian Thrun

Recent Advances in Robot Learning contains seven papers on robot learning written by leading researchers in the field. As the selection of papers illustrates, the field of robot learning is both active and diverse. A variety of machine learning methods, ranging from inductive logic programming to reinforcement learning, is being applied to many subproblems in robot perception and control, often with objectives as diverse as parameter calibration and concept formulation. While no unified robot learning framework has yet emerged to cover the variety of problems and approaches described in these papers and other publications, a clear set of shared issues underlies many robot learning problems. Machine learning, when applied to robotics, is situated: it is embedded into a real-world system that tightly integrates perception, decision making and execution. Since robot learning involves decision making, there is an inherent active learning issue. Robotic domains are usually complex, yet the expense of using actual robotic hardware often prohibits the collection of large amounts of training data. Most robotic systems are real-time systems. Decisions must be made within critical or practical time constraints. These characteristics present challenges and constraints to the learning system. Since these characteristics are shared by other important real-world application domains, robotics is a highly attractive area for research on machine learning. On the other hand, machine learning is also highly attractive to robotics. There is a great variety of open problems in robotics that defy a static, hand-coded solution. Recent Advances in Robot Learning is an edited volume of peer-reviewed original research comprising seven invited contributions by leading researchers. This research work has also been published as a special issue of Machine Learning (Volume 23, Numbers 2 and 3).

Lifelong learning addresses situations in which a learner faces a series of different learning tasks providing the opportunity for synergy among them. Explanation-based neural network learning (EBNN) is a machine learning algorithm that transfers knowledge across multiple learning tasks. When faced with a new learning task, EBNN exploits domain knowledge accumulated in previous learning tasks to guide generalization in the new one. As a result, EBNN generalizes more accurately from less data than comparable methods. Explanation-Based Neural Network Learning: A Lifelong Learning Approach describes the basic EBNN paradigm and investigates it in the context of supervised learning, reinforcement learning, robotics, and chess. `The paradigm of lifelong learning - using earlier learned knowledge to improve subsequent learning - is a promising direction for a new generation of machine learning algorithms. Given the need for more accurate learning methods, it is difficult to imagine a future for machine learning that does not include this paradigm.' From the Foreword by Tom M. Mitchell.

This monograph describes a new family of algorithms for the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem in robotics, called FastSLAM.