CARoL: Context-aware Adaptation for Robot Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hu, Zechen, Xu, Tong, Xiao, Xuesu, Wang, Xuan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hu, Zechen
Xu, Tong
Xiao, Xuesu
Wang, Xuan
author_facet Hu, Zechen
Xu, Tong
Xiao, Xuesu
Wang, Xuan
contents Using Reinforcement Learning (RL) to learn new robotic tasks from scratch is often inefficient. Leveraging prior knowledge has the potential to significantly enhance learning efficiency, which, however, raises two critical challenges: how to determine the relevancy of existing knowledge and how to adaptively integrate them into learning a new task. In this paper, we propose Context-aware Adaptation for Robot Learning (CARoL), a novel framework to efficiently learn a similar but distinct new task from prior knowledge. CARoL incorporates context awareness by analyzing state transitions in system dynamics to identify similarities between the new task and prior knowledge. It then utilizes these identified similarities to prioritize and adapt specific knowledge pieces for the new task. Additionally, CARoL has a broad applicability spanning policy-based, value-based, and actor-critic RL algorithms. We validate the efficiency and generalizability of CARoL on both simulated robotic platforms and physical ground vehicles. The simulations include CarRacing and LunarLander environments, where CARoL demonstrates faster convergence and higher rewards when learning policies for new tasks. In real-world experiments, we show that CARoL enables a ground vehicle to quickly and efficiently adapt policies learned in simulation to smoothly traverse real-world off-road terrain.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_07006
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CARoL: Context-aware Adaptation for Robot Learning
Hu, Zechen
Xu, Tong
Xiao, Xuesu
Wang, Xuan
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Using Reinforcement Learning (RL) to learn new robotic tasks from scratch is often inefficient. Leveraging prior knowledge has the potential to significantly enhance learning efficiency, which, however, raises two critical challenges: how to determine the relevancy of existing knowledge and how to adaptively integrate them into learning a new task. In this paper, we propose Context-aware Adaptation for Robot Learning (CARoL), a novel framework to efficiently learn a similar but distinct new task from prior knowledge. CARoL incorporates context awareness by analyzing state transitions in system dynamics to identify similarities between the new task and prior knowledge. It then utilizes these identified similarities to prioritize and adapt specific knowledge pieces for the new task. Additionally, CARoL has a broad applicability spanning policy-based, value-based, and actor-critic RL algorithms. We validate the efficiency and generalizability of CARoL on both simulated robotic platforms and physical ground vehicles. The simulations include CarRacing and LunarLander environments, where CARoL demonstrates faster convergence and higher rewards when learning policies for new tasks. In real-world experiments, we show that CARoL enables a ground vehicle to quickly and efficiently adapt policies learned in simulation to smoothly traverse real-world off-road terrain.
title CARoL: Context-aware Adaptation for Robot Learning
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07006