5 accepted papers
This article considers the problem of diagnosing certain common errors in reward design. Its insights are also applicable to the design of cost functions and performance metrics more generally. To diagnose common errors, we develop 8 simple sanity checks for identifying flaws in reward functions. We…
In robotic tasks, we encounter the unique strengths of (1) reinforcement learning (RL) that can handle high-dimensional observations as well as unknown, complex dynamics and (2) planning that can handle sparse and delayed rewards given a dynamics model. Combining these strengths of RL and planning,…
Solving robotic navigation tasks via reinforcement learning (RL) is challenging due to their sparse reward and long decision horizon nature. However, in many navigation tasks, high-level (HL) task representations, like a rough floor plan, are available. Previous work has demonstrated efficient learn…
This paper introduces SpaceBok, a quadrupedal robot created to investigate dynamic legged locomotion for the exploration of low-gravity celestial bodies. With a hip height of 500 mm and a mass of 20 kg, its dimensions are comparable to a medium-sized dog. The robot's leg configuration is based on an…
Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) describes the problem of learning an unknown reward function of a Markov Decision Process (MDP) from observed behavior of an agent. Since the agent’s behavior originates in its policy and MDP policies depend on both the stochastic system dynamics as well as the r…