From "Thumbs Up" to "10 out of 10": Reconsidering Scalar Feedback in Interactive Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yu, Hang, Aronson, Reuben M., Allen, Katherine H., Short, Elaine Schaertl
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Yu, Hang
Aronson, Reuben M.
Allen, Katherine H.
Short, Elaine Schaertl
author_facet Yu, Hang
Aronson, Reuben M.
Allen, Katherine H.
Short, Elaine Schaertl
contents Learning from human feedback is an effective way to improve robotic learning in exploration-heavy tasks. Compared to the wide application of binary human feedback, scalar human feedback has been used less because it is believed to be noisy and unstable. In this paper, we compare scalar and binary feedback, and demonstrate that scalar feedback benefits learning when properly handled. We collected binary or scalar feedback respectively from two groups of crowdworkers on a robot task. We found that when considering how consistently a participant labeled the same data, scalar feedback led to less consistency than binary feedback; however, the difference vanishes if small mismatches are allowed. Additionally, scalar and binary feedback show no significant differences in their correlations with key Reinforcement Learning targets. We then introduce Stabilizing TEacher Assessment DYnamics (STEADY) to improve learning from scalar feedback. Based on the idea that scalar feedback is muti-distributional, STEADY re-constructs underlying positive and negative feedback distributions and re-scales scalar feedback based on feedback statistics. We show that models trained with \textit{scalar feedback + STEADY } outperform baselines, including binary feedback and raw scalar feedback, in a robot reaching task with non-expert human feedback. Our results show that both binary feedback and scalar feedback are dynamic, and scalar feedback is a promising signal for use in interactive Reinforcement Learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_10284
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle From "Thumbs Up" to "10 out of 10": Reconsidering Scalar Feedback in Interactive Reinforcement Learning
Yu, Hang
Aronson, Reuben M.
Allen, Katherine H.
Short, Elaine Schaertl
Robotics
Human-Computer Interaction
Learning from human feedback is an effective way to improve robotic learning in exploration-heavy tasks. Compared to the wide application of binary human feedback, scalar human feedback has been used less because it is believed to be noisy and unstable. In this paper, we compare scalar and binary feedback, and demonstrate that scalar feedback benefits learning when properly handled. We collected binary or scalar feedback respectively from two groups of crowdworkers on a robot task. We found that when considering how consistently a participant labeled the same data, scalar feedback led to less consistency than binary feedback; however, the difference vanishes if small mismatches are allowed. Additionally, scalar and binary feedback show no significant differences in their correlations with key Reinforcement Learning targets. We then introduce Stabilizing TEacher Assessment DYnamics (STEADY) to improve learning from scalar feedback. Based on the idea that scalar feedback is muti-distributional, STEADY re-constructs underlying positive and negative feedback distributions and re-scales scalar feedback based on feedback statistics. We show that models trained with \textit{scalar feedback + STEADY } outperform baselines, including binary feedback and raw scalar feedback, in a robot reaching task with non-expert human feedback. Our results show that both binary feedback and scalar feedback are dynamic, and scalar feedback is a promising signal for use in interactive Reinforcement Learning.
title From "Thumbs Up" to "10 out of 10": Reconsidering Scalar Feedback in Interactive Reinforcement Learning
topic Robotics
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.10284