Behavioral Repertoire Learning in Robotics

Antoine Cully (1) , Jean-Baptiste Mouret (1)

1 ISIR - Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique

Learning in robotics typically involves choosing a simple goal (e.g. walking) and assessing the performance of each controller with regard to this task (e.g. walking speed). However, learning advanced, input-driven controllers (e.g. walking in each direction) requires testing each controller on a large sample of the possible input signals. This costly process makes difficult to learn useful low-level controllers in robotics. Here we introduce BR-Evolution, a new evolutionary learning technique that generates a behavioral repertoire by taking advantage of the candidate solutions that are usually discarded. Instead of evolving a single, general controller, BR-evolution thus evolves a collection of simple controllers, one for each variant of the target behavior; to distinguish similar controllers, it uses a performance objective that allows it to produce a collection of diverse but high-performing behaviors. We evaluated this new technique by evolving gait controllers for a simulated hexapod robot. Results show that a single run of the EA quickly finds a collection of controllers that allows the robot to reach each point of the reachable space. Overall, BR-Evolution opens a new kind of learning algorithm that simultaneously optimizes all the achievable behaviors of a robot.

Domaines: Robotique [cs.RO]; Intelligence artificielle [cs.AI]; Apprentissage [cs.LG]

Antoine Cully, Jean-Baptiste Mouret. Behavioral Repertoire Learning in Robotics. Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, Jul 2013, Amsterdam, Netherlands. pp.1-8. ⟨hal-00841958⟩