Robotics grasping refers to the task of making a robotic system pick an object by applying forces and torques on its surface. Despite the recent advances in data-driven approaches, grasping remains an unsolved problem. Most of the works on this task are relying on priors and heavy constraints to avoid the exploration problem. Novelty Search (NS) refers to evolutionary algorithms that replace selection of best performing individuals with selection of the most novel ones. Such methods have already shown promising results on hard exploration problems. In this work, we introduce a new NS-based method that can generate large datasets of grasping trajectories in a platform-agnostic manner. Inspired by the hierarchical learning paradigm, our method decouples approach and prehension to make the behavioral space smoother. Experiments conducted on 3 different robot-gripper setups and on several standard objects shows that our method outperforms state-of-the-art for generating diverse repertoire of grasping trajectories, getting a higher successful run ratio, as well as a better diversity for both approach and prehension. Some of the generated solutions have been successfully deployed on a real robot, showing the exploitability of the obtained repertoires.

If you are interested in writing a review, contact chandra@cis. It is intended to be a "general textbook of knowledge-base analysis and design" (p. Its great strength is recognizing the need for an interdisciplinary approach, and the attempt at presenting the logical and philosophical foundations of knowledge representation under a unified view. Its great weakness is a lack of consistent rigor, which is needed in a textbook for newcomers to a subject. After some historical remarks and a first introductory chapter devoted to logic, Sowa immediately attacks the hard problems involved in choosing ontological categories, which lie at the heart of any knowledge representation project.

A final chapter overviews the avoid being puzzled by the many confusions, to be a "general textbook of problems and the techniques for