DiSA-IQL: Offline Reinforcement Learning for Robust Soft Robot Control under Distribution Shifts

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: He, Linjin, Qi, Xinda, Chen, Dong, Li, Zhaojian, Tan, Xiaobo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author He, Linjin
Qi, Xinda
Chen, Dong
Li, Zhaojian
Tan, Xiaobo
author_facet He, Linjin
Qi, Xinda
Chen, Dong
Li, Zhaojian
Tan, Xiaobo
contents Soft snake robots offer remarkable flexibility and adaptability in complex environments, yet their control remains challenging due to highly nonlinear dynamics. Existing model-based and bio-inspired controllers rely on simplified assumptions that limit performance. Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has recently emerged as a promising alternative, but online training is often impractical because of costly and potentially damaging real-world interactions. Offline RL provides a safer option by leveraging pre-collected datasets, but it suffers from distribution shift, which degrades generalization to unseen scenarios. To overcome this challenge, we propose DiSA-IQL (Distribution-Shift-Aware Implicit Q-Learning), an extension of IQL that incorporates robustness modulation by penalizing unreliable state-action pairs to mitigate distribution shift. We evaluate DiSA-IQL on goal-reaching tasks across two settings: in-distribution and out-of-distribution evaluation. Simulation results show that DiSA-IQL consistently outperforms baseline models, including Behavior Cloning (BC), Conservative Q-Learning (CQL), and vanilla IQL, achieving higher success rates, smoother trajectories, and improved robustness. The codes are open-sourced to support reproducibility and to facilitate further research in offline RL for soft robot control.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_00358
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DiSA-IQL: Offline Reinforcement Learning for Robust Soft Robot Control under Distribution Shifts
He, Linjin
Qi, Xinda
Chen, Dong
Li, Zhaojian
Tan, Xiaobo
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Soft snake robots offer remarkable flexibility and adaptability in complex environments, yet their control remains challenging due to highly nonlinear dynamics. Existing model-based and bio-inspired controllers rely on simplified assumptions that limit performance. Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has recently emerged as a promising alternative, but online training is often impractical because of costly and potentially damaging real-world interactions. Offline RL provides a safer option by leveraging pre-collected datasets, but it suffers from distribution shift, which degrades generalization to unseen scenarios. To overcome this challenge, we propose DiSA-IQL (Distribution-Shift-Aware Implicit Q-Learning), an extension of IQL that incorporates robustness modulation by penalizing unreliable state-action pairs to mitigate distribution shift. We evaluate DiSA-IQL on goal-reaching tasks across two settings: in-distribution and out-of-distribution evaluation. Simulation results show that DiSA-IQL consistently outperforms baseline models, including Behavior Cloning (BC), Conservative Q-Learning (CQL), and vanilla IQL, achieving higher success rates, smoother trajectories, and improved robustness. The codes are open-sourced to support reproducibility and to facilitate further research in offline RL for soft robot control.
title DiSA-IQL: Offline Reinforcement Learning for Robust Soft Robot Control under Distribution Shifts
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00358