Title
Improved Exploration Through Latent Trajectory Optimization In Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient
Abstract
Model-free reinforcement learning algorithms such as Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) often require additional exploration strategies, especially if the actor is of deterministic nature. This work evaluates the use of model-based trajectory optimization methods used for exploration in Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient when trained on a latent image embedding. In addition, an extension of DDPG is derived using a value function as critic, making use of a learned deep dynamics model to compute the policy gradient. This approach leads to a symbiotic relationship between the deep reinforcement learning algorithm and the latent trajectory optimizer. The trajectory optimizer benefits from the critic learned by the RL algorithm and the latter from the enhanced exploration generated by the planner. The developed methods are evaluated on two continuous control tasks, one in simulation and one in the real world. In particular, a Baxter robot is trained to perform an insertion task, while only receiving sparse rewards and images as observations from the environment.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1109/IROS40897.2019.8967896
2019 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS)
Field
DocType
ISSN
Computer vision,Embedding,Trajectory optimization,Computer science,Planner,Bellman equation,Artificial intelligence,Reinforcement learning algorithm,Robot,Trajectory,Reinforcement learning
Conference
2153-0858
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Kevin Sebastian Luck110.69
Mel Vecerík2122.28
Simon Stepputtis341.78
Heni Ben Amor435935.77
Scholz, Jonathan51045.42