Ringling Bros. circus star who performs by the name Nick Nack walks Fox News Digital through the process of learning a balancing act called rola bola, which he combines with many other talents, like juggling and comedy. Jan Damm performs as Nick Nack in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus show. His character has a large comedic presence, but he also has other tricks up his sleeve. Damm performs a balancing act called rola bola and is a master juggler. He is also joined on stage by a unique partner, a robotic dog named Bailey.

The Linear Parameter Varying Dynamical System (LPV-DS) is an effective approach that learns stable, time-invariant motion policies using statistical modeling and semi-definite optimization to encode complex motions for reactive robot control. Despite its strengths, the LPV-DS learning approach faces challenges due to the curse of dimensionality, impacting model and computational efficiency. To address this, we introduce the Directionality-Aware Mixture Model (DAMM), a novel statistical model that applies the Riemannian metric on the n-sphere $\mathbb{S}^n$ to efficiently blend non-Euclidean directional data with $\mathbb{R}^m$ Euclidean states. Additionally, we develop a hybrid Markov chain Monte Carlo technique that combines Gibbs Sampling with Split/Merge Proposals, allowing for parallel computation to drastically speed up inference. Our extensive empirical tests demonstrate that LPV-DS integrated with DAMM achieves higher reproduction accuracy, better model efficiency, and near real-time/online learning compared to standard estimation methods on various datasets. Lastly, we demonstrate its suitability for incrementally learning multi-behavior policies in real-world robot experiments.