How do care robots learn?

“Care robots have to learn from their mistakes, only then can they work together with humans," says prof.dr.ir. Pieter Jonker (biomechatronics & human machine control, ME) in a video.

Because they have to perform various tasks, like picking up things and reminding patients to take their medicine, they have to be intelligent. Jonker uses the method of declarative learning, just like babies do. By looking, they learn to recognize objects, and so they build up an entire database of objects. Then they learn how to pick up such an object. This learning process involves trial and error, or reinforcement learning. You learn what they have to do and reward them for it. Then they learn how they should do it themselves. After about 40 hours they can do it.