Taylor Kessler Faulkner: Robots Learning from Real People

Robots deployed in the wild can improve their performance by using input from human teachers. Furthermore, both robots and humans can benefit when robots adapt to and learn from the people around them. However, real people can act in imperfect ways, and can often be unable to provide input in large quantities. In this talk, I will address some of the past research I have conducted toward addressing these issues, which has focused on creating learning algorithms that can learn from imperfect teachers. I will also talk about my current work on the Robot-Assisted Feeding project in the Personal Robotics Lab at the University of Washington, which I am approaching through a similar lens of working with real teachers and possibly imperfect information.