Evolving generalist controllers to handle a wide range of morphological variations

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Triebold, Corinna, Yaman, Anil
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Triebold, Corinna
Yaman, Anil
author_facet Triebold, Corinna
Yaman, Anil
contents Neuro-evolutionary methods have proven effective in addressing a wide range of tasks. However, the study of the robustness and generalizability of evolved artificial neural networks (ANNs) has remained limited. This has immense implications in the fields like robotics where such controllers are used in control tasks. Unexpected morphological or environmental changes during operation can risk failure if the ANN controllers are unable to handle these changes. This paper proposes an algorithm that aims to enhance the robustness and generalizability of the controllers. This is achieved by introducing morphological variations during the evolutionary training process. As a results, it is possible to discover generalist controllers that can handle a wide range of morphological variations sufficiently without the need of the information regarding their morphologies or adaptation of their parameters. We perform an extensive experimental analysis on simulation that demonstrates the trade-off between specialist and generalist controllers. The results show that generalists are able to control a range of morphological variations with a cost of underperforming on a specific morphology relative to a specialist. This research contributes to the field by addressing the limited understanding of robustness and generalizability and proposes a method by which to improve these properties.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_10201
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evolving generalist controllers to handle a wide range of morphological variations
Triebold, Corinna
Yaman, Anil
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
Neuro-evolutionary methods have proven effective in addressing a wide range of tasks. However, the study of the robustness and generalizability of evolved artificial neural networks (ANNs) has remained limited. This has immense implications in the fields like robotics where such controllers are used in control tasks. Unexpected morphological or environmental changes during operation can risk failure if the ANN controllers are unable to handle these changes. This paper proposes an algorithm that aims to enhance the robustness and generalizability of the controllers. This is achieved by introducing morphological variations during the evolutionary training process. As a results, it is possible to discover generalist controllers that can handle a wide range of morphological variations sufficiently without the need of the information regarding their morphologies or adaptation of their parameters. We perform an extensive experimental analysis on simulation that demonstrates the trade-off between specialist and generalist controllers. The results show that generalists are able to control a range of morphological variations with a cost of underperforming on a specific morphology relative to a specialist. This research contributes to the field by addressing the limited understanding of robustness and generalizability and proposes a method by which to improve these properties.
title Evolving generalist controllers to handle a wide range of morphological variations
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.10201