Title: Active model learning and diverse action sampling for task and motion planning,
Abstract: The objective of this work is to augment the basic abilities of a robot by
learning to use new sensorimotor primitives to enable the solution of complex
long-horizon problems. Solving long-horizon problems in complex domains
requires flexible generative planning that can combine primitive abilities in
novel combinations to solve problems as they arise in the world. In order to
plan to combine primitive actions, we must have models of the preconditions and
effects of those actions: under what circumstances will executing this
primitive achieve some particular effect in the world?
We use, and develop novel improvements on, state-of-the-art methods for
active learning and sampling. We use Gaussian process methods for learning the
conditions of operator effectiveness from small numbers of expensive training
examples collected by experimentation on a robot. We develop adaptive sampling
methods for generating diverse elements of continuous sets (such as robot
configurations and object poses) during planning for solving a new task, so
that planning is as efficient as possible. We demonstrate these methods in an
integrated system, combining newly learned models with an efficient
continuous-space robot task and motion planner to learn to solve long horizon
problems more efficiently than was previously possible.