A Retrospective on the Robot Air Hockey Challenge: Benchmarking Robust, Reliable, and Safe Learning Techniques for Real-world Robotics

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Main Authors: Liu, Puze, Günster, Jonas, Funk, Niklas, Gröger, Simon, Chen, Dong, Bou-Ammar, Haitham, Jankowski, Julius, Marić, Ante, Calinon, Sylvain, Orsula, Andrej, Olivares-Mendez, Miguel, Zhou, Hongyi, Lioutikov, Rudolf, Neumann, Gerhard, Zhalehmehrabi, Amarildo Likmeta Amirhossein, Bonenfant, Thomas, Restelli, Marcello, Tateo, Davide, Liu, Ziyuan, Peters, Jan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Liu, Puze
Günster, Jonas
Funk, Niklas
Gröger, Simon
Chen, Dong
Bou-Ammar, Haitham
Jankowski, Julius
Marić, Ante
Calinon, Sylvain
Orsula, Andrej
Olivares-Mendez, Miguel
Zhou, Hongyi
Lioutikov, Rudolf
Neumann, Gerhard
Zhalehmehrabi, Amarildo Likmeta Amirhossein
Bonenfant, Thomas
Restelli, Marcello
Tateo, Davide
Liu, Ziyuan
Peters, Jan
author_facet Liu, Puze
Günster, Jonas
Funk, Niklas
Gröger, Simon
Chen, Dong
Bou-Ammar, Haitham
Jankowski, Julius
Marić, Ante
Calinon, Sylvain
Orsula, Andrej
Olivares-Mendez, Miguel
Zhou, Hongyi
Lioutikov, Rudolf
Neumann, Gerhard
Zhalehmehrabi, Amarildo Likmeta Amirhossein
Bonenfant, Thomas
Restelli, Marcello
Tateo, Davide
Liu, Ziyuan
Peters, Jan
contents Machine learning methods have a groundbreaking impact in many application domains, but their application on real robotic platforms is still limited. Despite the many challenges associated with combining machine learning technology with robotics, robot learning remains one of the most promising directions for enhancing the capabilities of robots. When deploying learning-based approaches on real robots, extra effort is required to address the challenges posed by various real-world factors. To investigate the key factors influencing real-world deployment and to encourage original solutions from different researchers, we organized the Robot Air Hockey Challenge at the NeurIPS 2023 conference. We selected the air hockey task as a benchmark, encompassing low-level robotics problems and high-level tactics. Different from other machine learning-centric benchmarks, participants need to tackle practical challenges in robotics, such as the sim-to-real gap, low-level control issues, safety problems, real-time requirements, and the limited availability of real-world data. Furthermore, we focus on a dynamic environment, removing the typical assumption of quasi-static motions of other real-world benchmarks. The competition's results show that solutions combining learning-based approaches with prior knowledge outperform those relying solely on data when real-world deployment is challenging. Our ablation study reveals which real-world factors may be overlooked when building a learning-based solution. The successful real-world air hockey deployment of best-performing agents sets the foundation for future competitions and follow-up research directions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_05718
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Retrospective on the Robot Air Hockey Challenge: Benchmarking Robust, Reliable, and Safe Learning Techniques for Real-world Robotics
Liu, Puze
Günster, Jonas
Funk, Niklas
Gröger, Simon
Chen, Dong
Bou-Ammar, Haitham
Jankowski, Julius
Marić, Ante
Calinon, Sylvain
Orsula, Andrej
Olivares-Mendez, Miguel
Zhou, Hongyi
Lioutikov, Rudolf
Neumann, Gerhard
Zhalehmehrabi, Amarildo Likmeta Amirhossein
Bonenfant, Thomas
Restelli, Marcello
Tateo, Davide
Liu, Ziyuan
Peters, Jan
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Machine learning methods have a groundbreaking impact in many application domains, but their application on real robotic platforms is still limited. Despite the many challenges associated with combining machine learning technology with robotics, robot learning remains one of the most promising directions for enhancing the capabilities of robots. When deploying learning-based approaches on real robots, extra effort is required to address the challenges posed by various real-world factors. To investigate the key factors influencing real-world deployment and to encourage original solutions from different researchers, we organized the Robot Air Hockey Challenge at the NeurIPS 2023 conference. We selected the air hockey task as a benchmark, encompassing low-level robotics problems and high-level tactics. Different from other machine learning-centric benchmarks, participants need to tackle practical challenges in robotics, such as the sim-to-real gap, low-level control issues, safety problems, real-time requirements, and the limited availability of real-world data. Furthermore, we focus on a dynamic environment, removing the typical assumption of quasi-static motions of other real-world benchmarks. The competition's results show that solutions combining learning-based approaches with prior knowledge outperform those relying solely on data when real-world deployment is challenging. Our ablation study reveals which real-world factors may be overlooked when building a learning-based solution. The successful real-world air hockey deployment of best-performing agents sets the foundation for future competitions and follow-up research directions.
title A Retrospective on the Robot Air Hockey Challenge: Benchmarking Robust, Reliable, and Safe Learning Techniques for Real-world Robotics
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.05718