VertiSelector: Automatic Curriculum Learning for Wheeled Mobility on Vertically Challenging Terrain

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Xu, Tong, Pan, Chenhui, Xiao, Xuesu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Xu, Tong
Pan, Chenhui
Xiao, Xuesu
author_facet Xu, Tong
Pan, Chenhui
Xiao, Xuesu
contents Reinforcement Learning (RL) has the potential to enable extreme off-road mobility by circumventing complex kinodynamic modeling, planning, and control by simulated end-to-end trial-and-error learning experiences. However, most RL methods are sample-inefficient when training in a large amount of manually designed simulation environments and struggle at generalizing to the real world. To address these issues, we introduce VertiSelector (VS), an automatic curriculum learning framework designed to enhance learning efficiency and generalization by selectively sampling training terrain. VS prioritizes vertically challenging terrain with higher Temporal Difference (TD) errors when revisited, thereby allowing robots to learn at the edge of their evolving capabilities. By dynamically adjusting the sampling focus, VS significantly boosts sample efficiency and generalization within the VW-Chrono simulator built on the Chrono multi-physics engine. Furthermore, we provide simulation and physical results using VS on a Verti-4-Wheeler platform. These results demonstrate that VS can achieve 23.08% improvement in terms of success rate by efficiently sampling during training and robustly generalizing to the real world.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_17469
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle VertiSelector: Automatic Curriculum Learning for Wheeled Mobility on Vertically Challenging Terrain
Xu, Tong
Pan, Chenhui
Xiao, Xuesu
Robotics
Reinforcement Learning (RL) has the potential to enable extreme off-road mobility by circumventing complex kinodynamic modeling, planning, and control by simulated end-to-end trial-and-error learning experiences. However, most RL methods are sample-inefficient when training in a large amount of manually designed simulation environments and struggle at generalizing to the real world. To address these issues, we introduce VertiSelector (VS), an automatic curriculum learning framework designed to enhance learning efficiency and generalization by selectively sampling training terrain. VS prioritizes vertically challenging terrain with higher Temporal Difference (TD) errors when revisited, thereby allowing robots to learn at the edge of their evolving capabilities. By dynamically adjusting the sampling focus, VS significantly boosts sample efficiency and generalization within the VW-Chrono simulator built on the Chrono multi-physics engine. Furthermore, we provide simulation and physical results using VS on a Verti-4-Wheeler platform. These results demonstrate that VS can achieve 23.08% improvement in terms of success rate by efficiently sampling during training and robustly generalizing to the real world.
title VertiSelector: Automatic Curriculum Learning for Wheeled Mobility on Vertically Challenging Terrain
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.17469