This work tackles force control for contact-rich manipulation tasks with rigid robots using RL.
problem Challenges in working with real robotic hardware, especially position-controlled robots.
method Combines RL with traditional force control techniques, implementing parallel position/force control and admittance control.
result Validated methods on both simulation and real robot (UR3 e-series) for force control.
Paper proposes a method to control robots of different shapes efficiently.
problem Learning optimal control policies for robots of various shapes is challenging.
method Hierarchical architecture with hypernetworks and fixed attention mechanism.
result Method improves learning performance and generalizes to unseen morphologies.
In this paper, a MIMO simulated annealing SA based Q learning method is proposed to control a line follower robot. The conventional controller for these types of robots is the proportional P controller. Considering the unknown mechanical characteristics of the robot and uncertainties such as friction and slippery surfa…
This research evaluates learning models for bionic robots, focusing on transfer function identification.
problem Developers need guidance on selecting and constructing transfer functions for bionic robots.
method Comprehensive evaluation strategy including data collection, learning model selection, comparative analysis, and transfer function identification.
result A framework for effectively dealing with multi-input multi-output robotic data.
A decentralized deep RL controller improves hexapod locomotion learning.
problem Deep RL struggles with real-world legged robot control.
method Decentralized deep RL on a hexapod robot.
result Decentralized approach learns better and faster.
Robotics: Rolling robots on a moving platform can be controlled.
problem Controlling the motion of rolling robots atop a moving platform.
method Developed a mathematical model and demonstrated simulations.
result Platform acceleration can control robot's heading and motion.
Autonomous robots often encounter challenging situations where their control policies fail and an expert human operator must briefly intervene, e.g., through teleoperation. In settings where multiple robots act in separate environments, a single human operator can manage a fleet of robots by identifying and teleoperati…
Learning robot tasks or controllers using deep reinforcement learning has been proven effective in simulations. Learning in simulation has several advantages. For example, one can fully control the simulated environment, including halting motions while performing computations. Another advantage when robots are involved…
RL controls small soccer robots in a real league, beating human-designed policies.
problem Training robots to play complex, real-world sports.
method Sim-to-Real RL approach, training in simulated environment, applying to real-world robots.
result Robots learned policies to compete effectively, beating human-designed strategies.
Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has emerged as a powerful control technique in robotic science. In contrast to control theory, DRL is more robust in the thorough exploration of the environment. This capability of DRL generates more human-like behaviour and intelligence when applied to the robots. To explore this capa…
A new reinforcement learning method for robots thinking and moving simultaneously.
problem Concurrent control in robotic systems where actions must be decided while the system is still evolving.
method Continuous-time Bellman equations, discretization aware of system delays, and architectural extension to deep reinforcement learning.
result The method successfully handles tasks requiring simultaneous decision-making and action execution.
Motion planning and control are key problems in a collection of robotic applications including the design of autonomous agile vehicles and of minimalist manipulators. These problems can be accurately formalized within the language of affine connections and of geometric control theory. In this paper we overview recent r…
In this paper we present a geometric control law for position and line-of-sight stabilization of the nonholonomic spherical robot actuated by three independent actuators. A simple configuration error function with an appropriately defined transport map is proposed to extract feedforward and proportional-derivative cont…
We demonstrate that models trained only in simulation can be used to solve a manipulation problem of unprecedented complexity on a real robot. This is made possible by two key components: a novel algorithm, which we call automatic domain randomization (ADR) and a robot platform built for machine learning. ADR automatic…
Study aims to develop a humanoid robot dialogue system.
problem Current dialogue systems lack attention to non-verbal cues.
method Participated in a competition to develop a system with facial expressions and gaze control.
result Developed a humanoid robot dialogue system.
Robot-assisted dressing offers an opportunity to benefit the lives of many people with disabilities, such as some older adults. However, robots currently lack common sense about the physical implications of their actions on people. The physical implications of dressing are complicated by non-rigid garments, which can r…
A novel controller for wheeled robots handles joystick inputs for smooth steering.
problem Steering control for differential-drive wheeled robots from indirect joystick inputs.
method Developed a geometric controller based on Darboux frame kinematics.
result Smooth trajectories achieved with safety constraints and no desired states.
Simulation-to-real transfer is an important strategy for making reinforcement learning practical with real robots. Successful sim-to-real transfer systems have difficulty producing policies which generalize across tasks, despite training for thousands of hours equivalent real robot time. To address this shortcoming, we…
Deep RL trains a robust humanoid push-recovery policy.
problem Training robust humanoid push-recovery policies.
method Model-free Deep Reinforcement Learning.
result Policy learns robust behaviors across the entire body.
We construct a privileged system of coordinates with respect to the controlling distribution of a trident snake robot and, furthermore, we construct a nilpotent approximation with respect to the given filtration. Note that all constructions are local in the neighbourhood of a particular point. We compare the motions co…
The paper addresses optimal control on Riemannian manifolds, introducing biased splines for robotic systems.
problem Optimal control on Riemannian manifolds with a mathematically natural cometric not capturing true motion cost.
method Encoding torque-based actuators into a cometric, characterizing optimal solutions via a 4th order differential equation.
result Identified a tensor as the geometric source of biasing solutions away from ordinary splines and geodesics.
Action chunking and data exploration improve behavior cloning in robotics.
problem Exponential errors in learning from demonstrations for continuous control tasks.
method Action chunking and exploratory data collection.
result Control-theoretic stability is key to improving imitation learning.
Robots learn to navigate rough terrain using reinforcement learning.
problem Generalizing robot behavior to new, unseen rough terrains.
method PPMC RL Training Algorithm
result Robots achieve 100% success rate in learning new rough terrain maps.
Paper proposes a new method to optimize robot body structure and control policy.
problem Optimizing robot body structure and control policy in a coupled manner.
method Revisits co-design problem as a Stackelberg game, incorporating control adaptation dynamics.
result Stackelberg PPO outperforms standard PPO in stability and performance.
Paper provides closed-form time derivatives for rigid body systems.
problem Need for time derivatives of equations of motion in robotics.
method Lie group formulation for rigid body systems to derive closed-form derivatives up to second-order.
result Closed-form equations provide direct insight into system dynamics.
A new RL framework handles autocorrelated actions for better learning and stability.
problem Improving reinforcement learning algorithms for better stability and efficiency.
method Introduces a new algorithm that optimizes policies with autocorrelated actions.
result The new algorithm outperforms existing methods in four simulated control problems.
Autonomous learning has been a promising direction in control and robotics for more than a decade since data-driven learning allows to reduce the amount of engineering knowledge, which is otherwise required. However, autonomous reinforcement learning (RL) approaches typically require many interactions with the system t…
Robotic weed control has seen increased research of late with its potential for boosting productivity in agriculture. Majority of works focus on developing robotics for croplands, ignoring the weed management problems facing rangeland stock farmers. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to widespread uptake of robotic weed con…
Paper learns versatile balancing and recovery motions for humanoid robots.
problem Training humanoid robots to handle unexpected perturbations.
method Hierarchical Deep Reinforcement Learning in a physics simulator.
result Learned skills comparable to preprogrammed controllers but more adaptable.
We present a method for fast training of vision based control policies on real robots. The key idea behind our method is to perform multi-task Reinforcement Learning with auxiliary tasks that differ not only in the reward to be optimized but also in the state-space in which they operate. In particular, we allow auxilia…
This paper improves robot grasping by integrating meta-control and latent-space imagination.
problem Dual-system approaches fail to consider the reliability of the learned model when making multiple-step predictions.
method A meta-controller arbitrates between model-based and model-free decisions based on local reliability, encouraging actions that improve the model and generating imagined experiences for additional training.
result Our approach learns near-optimal grasping policies in dense- and sparse-reward environments, outperforming baseline and state-of-the-art methods.
Predictions and predictive knowledge have seen recent success in improving not only robot control but also other applications ranging from industrial process control to rehabilitation. A property that makes these predictive approaches well suited for robotics is that they can be learned online and incrementally through…
We propose a neural information processing system which is obtained by re-purposing the function of a biological neural circuit model, to govern simulated and real-world control tasks. Inspired by the structure of the nervous system of the soil-worm, C. elegans, we introduce Neuronal Circuit Policies (NCPs), defined as…
MVPI framework optimizes risk in reinforcement learning, improving performance in robot simulations.
problem Optimizing risk in reinforcement learning control problems.
method Mean-Variance Policy Iteration (MVPI) framework for risk-averse control in MDPs.
result Risk-averse TD3 outperforms previous methods in robot simulation tasks.
This work uses QPGPs to improve ILC performance in repetitive tasks.
problem Performance degradation in repetitive motion tasks due to environmental changes and robot wear.
method Incorporates Quasi-Periodic Gaussian Processes into a predictive ILC framework.
result The proposed approach achieves faster convergence and robustness under disturbances.
Robotic table tennis learns efficient policies to return balls at 100Hz.
problem Developing efficient robotic table tennis strategies.
method Model-free reinforcement learning using evolutionary search on CNN-based policies.
result Robots can develop multi-modal styles (forehand and backhand) with 80% return rate.
Data-driven control of robotic systems using Koopman operators with error bounds.
problem Real-time control of nonlinear robotic systems with unknown dynamics.
method Constructing a Koopman operator-based linear representation using higher-order derivatives of nonlinear dynamics, with error bounds derived from Taylor series accuracy analysis.
result The Koopman model provides marginally better performance than competing nonlinear modeling methods and can be efficiently controlled using linear control design tools.
The paper studies how neural policies can be interpreted using decision trees.
problem Understanding how machine learning controllers make decisions in complex environments.
method The approach involves disentangled representation using decision trees to interpret neural policies.
result The paper shows that disentanglement of learned neural dynamics improves interpretability.
Deep reinforcement learning has been shown to solve challenging tasks where large amounts of training experience is available, usually obtained online while learning the task. Robotics is a significant potential application domain for many of these algorithms, but generating robot experience in the real world is expens…
The paper learns robot skills from demonstrations without supervision.
problem Discovering robotic options from unlabelled demonstrations.
method Temporal variational inference for latent variable learning.
result The framework can learn options across multiple datasets.
Learning to control robots directly based on images is a primary challenge in robotics. However, many existing reinforcement learning approaches require iteratively obtaining millions of robot samples to learn a policy, which can take significant time. In this paper, we focus on learning a realistic world model capturi…
DIGIT is a low-cost tactile sensor for in-hand manipulation.
problem Difficulty in sensing contact forces limits robotic manipulation.
method DIGIT miniaturizes and improves a vision-based tactile sensor.
result DIGIT enables better control of interactions with the environment.
New method improves smoothness of robot learning.
problem Jerky motion patterns on real robots from Deep RL exploration.
method Adapting state-dependent exploration to Deep RL algorithms with gSDE.
result Improved exploration and performance on real robots.
Introduces GFC for learning complex dynamical systems with geometric constraints.
problem Challenges in accurately modeling and predicting complex dynamical systems with geometric constraints.
method Geometric Contact Flows (GFC) using Riemannian and Contact geometry as inductive biases.
result Ensemble of contactomorphisms adapt the latent contact Hamiltonian model to target dynamics while preserving desirable properties.
State representation learning aims at learning compact representations from raw observations in robotics and control applications. Approaches used for this objective are auto-encoders, learning forward models, inverse dynamics or learning using generic priors on the state characteristics. However, the diversity in appl…
Despite the recent successes in robotic locomotion control, the design of robot relies heavily on human engineering. Automatic robot design has been a long studied subject, but the recent progress has been slowed due to the large combinatorial search space and the difficulty in evaluating the found candidates. To addre…
Robot learns multiple tasks hierarchically by transferring knowledge.
problem Learning multiple complex tasks in open-ended environments.
method Task-oriented procedures, goal-babbling, imitation learning, active learning, intrinsic motivation.
result Robots can learn complex tasks more efficiently by transferring knowledge from simpler ones.
Agent uses message passing to optimize robot navigation, balancing exploration and exploitation.
problem Optimizing robot navigation in continuous-valued spaces with uncertainty.
method Autoregressive active inference agent using message passing on a factor graph.
result Agent modulates action based on predictive uncertainty, leading to better model of dynamics.