Khalil Abuibaid

Khalil Abuibaid, Vinit Hegiste, Nigora Gafur et al.

Learning robot skills from scratch is often time-consuming, while reusing data promotes sustainability and improves sample efficiency. This study investigates policy transfer across different robotic platforms, focusing on peg-in-hole task using reinforcement learning (RL). Policy training is carried out on two different robots. Their policies are transferred and evaluated for zero-shot, fine-tuning, and training from scratch. Results indicate that zero-shot transfer leads to lower success rates and relatively longer task execution times, while fine-tuning significantly improves performance with fewer training time-steps. These findings highlight that policy transfer with adaptation techniques improves sample efficiency and generalization, reducing the need for extensive retraining and supporting sustainable robotic learning.

Khalil Abuibaid, Aleksandr Sidorenko, Achim Wagner et al.

Contact-rich robotic skills remain challenging for industrial robots due to tight geometric tolerances, frictional variability, and uncertain contact dynamics, particularly when using position-controlled manipulators. This paper presents a reusable and encapsulated skill-based strategy for peg-in-hole assembly, in which adaptation is achieved through Residual Reinforcement Learning (RRL). The assembly process is represented using composite skills with explicit pre-, post-, and invariant conditions, enabling modularity, reusability, and well-defined execution semantics across task variations. Safety and sample efficiency are promoted through RRL by restricting adaptation to residual refinements within each skill during contact-rich interactions, while the overall skill structure and execution flow remain invariant. The proposed approach is evaluated in MuJoCo simulation on a UR5e robot equipped with a Robotiq gripper and trained using SAC and JAX. Results demonstrate that the proposed formulation enables robust execution of assembly skills, highlighting its suitability for industrial automation.

Al-Harith Farhad, Khalil Abuibaid, Christiane Plociennik et al.

Neural networks are often regarded as universal equations that can estimate any function. This flexibility, however, comes with the drawback of high complexity, rendering these networks into black box models, which is especially relevant in safety-centric applications. To that end, we propose a pipeline for a collaborative robot (Cobot) grasping algorithm that detects relevant tools and generates the optimal grasp. To increase the transparency and reliability of this approach, we integrate an explainable AI method that provides an explanation for the underlying prediction of a model by extracting the learned features and correlating them to corresponding classes from the input. These concepts are then used as additional criteria to ensure the safe handling of work tools. In this paper, we show the consistency of this approach and the criterion for improving the handover position. This approach was tested in an industrial environment, where a camera system was set up to enable a robot to pick up certain tools and objects.