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Main Authors: Wu, Runzhe, Chen, Yiding, Swamy, Gokul, Brantley, Kianté, Sun, Wen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.13855
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author Wu, Runzhe
Chen, Yiding
Swamy, Gokul
Brantley, Kianté
Sun, Wen
author_facet Wu, Runzhe
Chen, Yiding
Swamy, Gokul
Brantley, Kianté
Sun, Wen
contents Adversarial Imitation Learning is traditionally framed as a two-player zero-sum game between a learner and an adversarially chosen cost function, and can therefore be thought of as the sequential generalization of a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). However, in recent years, diffusion models have emerged as a non-adversarial alternative to GANs that merely require training a score function via regression, yet produce generations of higher quality. In response, we investigate how to lift insights from diffusion modeling to the sequential setting. We propose diffusing states and performing score-matching along diffused states to measure the discrepancy between the expert's and learner's states. Thus, our approach only requires training score functions to predict noises via standard regression, making it significantly easier and more stable to train than adversarial methods. Theoretically, we prove first- and second-order instance-dependent bounds with linear scaling in the horizon, proving that our approach avoids the compounding errors that stymie offline approaches to imitation learning. Empirically, we show our approach outperforms both GAN-style imitation learning baselines and discriminator-free imitation learning baselines across various continuous control problems, including complex tasks like controlling humanoids to walk, sit, crawl, and navigate through obstacles.
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publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Diffusing States and Matching Scores: A New Framework for Imitation Learning
Wu, Runzhe
Chen, Yiding
Swamy, Gokul
Brantley, Kianté
Sun, Wen
Machine Learning
Adversarial Imitation Learning is traditionally framed as a two-player zero-sum game between a learner and an adversarially chosen cost function, and can therefore be thought of as the sequential generalization of a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). However, in recent years, diffusion models have emerged as a non-adversarial alternative to GANs that merely require training a score function via regression, yet produce generations of higher quality. In response, we investigate how to lift insights from diffusion modeling to the sequential setting. We propose diffusing states and performing score-matching along diffused states to measure the discrepancy between the expert's and learner's states. Thus, our approach only requires training score functions to predict noises via standard regression, making it significantly easier and more stable to train than adversarial methods. Theoretically, we prove first- and second-order instance-dependent bounds with linear scaling in the horizon, proving that our approach avoids the compounding errors that stymie offline approaches to imitation learning. Empirically, we show our approach outperforms both GAN-style imitation learning baselines and discriminator-free imitation learning baselines across various continuous control problems, including complex tasks like controlling humanoids to walk, sit, crawl, and navigate through obstacles.
title Diffusing States and Matching Scores: A New Framework for Imitation Learning
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.13855