VisualPredicator: Learning Abstract World Models with Neuro-Symbolic Predicates for Robot Planning
Yichao Liang, Nishanth Kumar, Hao Tang, Adrian Weller, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Tom Silver, Joao F. Henriques, Kevin Ellis
Abstract
Broadly intelligent agents should form task-specific abstractions that selectively expose the essential elements of a task, while abstracting away the complexity of the raw sensorimotor space. In this work, we present Neuro-Symbolic Predicates, a first-order abstraction language that combines the strengths of symbolic and neural knowledge representations. We outline an online algorithm for inventing such predicates and learning abstract world models. We compare our approach to hierarchical reinforcement learning, vision-language model planning, and symbolic predicate invention approaches, on both in- and out-of-distribution tasks across five simulated robotic domains. Results show that our approach offers better sample complexity, stronger out-of-distribution generalization, and improved interpretability.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{
liang2025visualpredicator,
title={VisualPredicator: Learning Abstract World Models with Neuro-Symbolic Predicates for Robot Planning},
author={Yichao Liang and Nishanth Kumar and Hao Tang and Adrian Weller and Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Tom Silver and Joao F. Henriques and Kevin Ellis},
booktitle={The Thirteenth International Conference on Learning Representations},
year={2025},
url={https://openreview.net/forum?id=QOfswj7hij}
}