Memory-Consistent Neural Networks for Imitation Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sridhar, Kaustubh, Dutta, Souradeep, Jayaraman, Dinesh, Weimer, James, Lee, Insup
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Sridhar, Kaustubh
Dutta, Souradeep
Jayaraman, Dinesh
Weimer, James
Lee, Insup
author_facet Sridhar, Kaustubh
Dutta, Souradeep
Jayaraman, Dinesh
Weimer, James
Lee, Insup
contents Imitation learning considerably simplifies policy synthesis compared to alternative approaches by exploiting access to expert demonstrations. For such imitation policies, errors away from the training samples are particularly critical. Even rare slip-ups in the policy action outputs can compound quickly over time, since they lead to unfamiliar future states where the policy is still more likely to err, eventually causing task failures. We revisit simple supervised ``behavior cloning'' for conveniently training the policy from nothing more than pre-recorded demonstrations, but carefully design the model class to counter the compounding error phenomenon. Our ``memory-consistent neural network'' (MCNN) outputs are hard-constrained to stay within clearly specified permissible regions anchored to prototypical ``memory'' training samples. We provide a guaranteed upper bound for the sub-optimality gap induced by MCNN policies. Using MCNNs on 10 imitation learning tasks, with MLP, Transformer, and Diffusion backbones, spanning dexterous robotic manipulation and driving, proprioceptive inputs and visual inputs, and varying sizes and types of demonstration data, we find large and consistent gains in performance, validating that MCNNs are better-suited than vanilla deep neural networks for imitation learning applications. Website: https://sites.google.com/view/mcnn-imitation
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2310_06171
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Memory-Consistent Neural Networks for Imitation Learning
Sridhar, Kaustubh
Dutta, Souradeep
Jayaraman, Dinesh
Weimer, James
Lee, Insup
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
Imitation learning considerably simplifies policy synthesis compared to alternative approaches by exploiting access to expert demonstrations. For such imitation policies, errors away from the training samples are particularly critical. Even rare slip-ups in the policy action outputs can compound quickly over time, since they lead to unfamiliar future states where the policy is still more likely to err, eventually causing task failures. We revisit simple supervised ``behavior cloning'' for conveniently training the policy from nothing more than pre-recorded demonstrations, but carefully design the model class to counter the compounding error phenomenon. Our ``memory-consistent neural network'' (MCNN) outputs are hard-constrained to stay within clearly specified permissible regions anchored to prototypical ``memory'' training samples. We provide a guaranteed upper bound for the sub-optimality gap induced by MCNN policies. Using MCNNs on 10 imitation learning tasks, with MLP, Transformer, and Diffusion backbones, spanning dexterous robotic manipulation and driving, proprioceptive inputs and visual inputs, and varying sizes and types of demonstration data, we find large and consistent gains in performance, validating that MCNNs are better-suited than vanilla deep neural networks for imitation learning applications. Website: https://sites.google.com/view/mcnn-imitation
title Memory-Consistent Neural Networks for Imitation Learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.06171