AdaFlow: Imitation Learning with Variance-Adaptive Flow-Based Policies

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hu, Xixi, Liu, Bo, Liu, Xingchao, Liu, Qiang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Hu, Xixi
Liu, Bo
Liu, Xingchao
Liu, Qiang
author_facet Hu, Xixi
Liu, Bo
Liu, Xingchao
Liu, Qiang
contents Diffusion-based imitation learning improves Behavioral Cloning (BC) on multi-modal decision-making, but comes at the cost of significantly slower inference due to the recursion in the diffusion process. It urges us to design efficient policy generators while keeping the ability to generate diverse actions. To address this challenge, we propose AdaFlow, an imitation learning framework based on flow-based generative modeling. AdaFlow represents the policy with state-conditioned ordinary differential equations (ODEs), which are known as probability flows. We reveal an intriguing connection between the conditional variance of their training loss and the discretization error of the ODEs. With this insight, we propose a variance-adaptive ODE solver that can adjust its step size in the inference stage, making AdaFlow an adaptive decision-maker, offering rapid inference without sacrificing diversity. Interestingly, it automatically reduces to a one-step generator when the action distribution is uni-modal. Our comprehensive empirical evaluation shows that AdaFlow achieves high performance with fast inference speed.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_04292
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AdaFlow: Imitation Learning with Variance-Adaptive Flow-Based Policies
Hu, Xixi
Liu, Bo
Liu, Xingchao
Liu, Qiang
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Diffusion-based imitation learning improves Behavioral Cloning (BC) on multi-modal decision-making, but comes at the cost of significantly slower inference due to the recursion in the diffusion process. It urges us to design efficient policy generators while keeping the ability to generate diverse actions. To address this challenge, we propose AdaFlow, an imitation learning framework based on flow-based generative modeling. AdaFlow represents the policy with state-conditioned ordinary differential equations (ODEs), which are known as probability flows. We reveal an intriguing connection between the conditional variance of their training loss and the discretization error of the ODEs. With this insight, we propose a variance-adaptive ODE solver that can adjust its step size in the inference stage, making AdaFlow an adaptive decision-maker, offering rapid inference without sacrificing diversity. Interestingly, it automatically reduces to a one-step generator when the action distribution is uni-modal. Our comprehensive empirical evaluation shows that AdaFlow achieves high performance with fast inference speed.
title AdaFlow: Imitation Learning with Variance-Adaptive Flow-Based Policies
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04292