In this paper, we propose a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) solution to the grasping problem using 2.5D images as the only source of information. In particular, we developed a simulated environment where a robot equipped with a vacuum gripper has the aim of reaching blocks with planar surfaces. These blocks can have different dimensions, shapes, position and orientation. Unity 3D allowed us to simulate a real-world setup, where a depth camera is placed in a fixed position and the stream of images is used by our policy network to learn how to solve the task. We explored different DRL algorithms and problem configurations. The experiments demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed DRL algorithm applied to grasp tasks guided by visual depth camera inputs. When using the proper policy, the proposed method estimates a robot tool configuration that reaches the object surface with negligible position and orientation errors. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first successful attempt of using 2.5D images only as of the input of a DRL algorithm, to solve the grasping problem regressing 3D world coordinates.
Although the previous works seem to obtain good results using deep reinforcement learning, there are a lot of other works that do not show these satisfactory results. A significant example is @cite_13 , which shows good results mainly on tasks with vector observations as input, while most of the tasks with visual observations perform badly.
@cite_13
2342662072 2963641140 2606433045 2963286043
Recently, researchers have made significant progress combining the advances in deep learning for learning feature representations with reinforcement learning. Some notable examples include training agents to play Atari games based on raw pixel data and to acquire advanced manipulation skills using raw sensory inputs. However, it has been difficult to quantify progress in the domain of continuous control due to the lack of a commonly adopted benchmark. In this work, we present a benchmark suite of continuous control tasks, including classic tasks like cart-pole swing-up, tasks with very high state and action dimensionality such as 3D humanoid locomotion, tasks with partial observations, and tasks with hierarchical structure. We report novel findings based on the systematic evaluation of a range of implemented reinforcement learning algorithms. Both the benchmark and reference implementations are released at this https URL in order to facilitate experimental reproducibility and to encourage adoption by other researchers. Recently, researchers have made significant progress combining the advances in deep learning for learning feature representations with reinforcement learning. Some notable examples include training agents to play Atari games based on raw pixel data and to acquire advanced manipulation skills using raw sensory inputs. However, it has been difficult to quantify progress in the domain of continuous control due to the lack of a commonly adopted benchmark. In this work, we present a benchmark suite of continuous control tasks, including classic tasks like cart-pole swing-up, tasks with very high state and action dimensionality such as 3D humanoid locomotion, tasks with partial observations, and tasks with hierarchical structure. We report novel findings based on the systematic evaluation of a range of implemented reinforcement learning algorithms. Both the benchmark and reference implementations are released at https: github.com rllab rllab in order to facilitate experimental reproducibility and to encourage adoption by other researchers. Deep reinforcement learning has achieved many impressive results in recent years. However, tasks with sparse rewards or long horizons continue to pose significant challenges. To tackle these important problems, we propose a general framework that first learns useful skills in a pre-training environment, and then leverages the acquired skills for learning faster in downstream tasks. Our approach brings together some of the strengths of intrinsic motivation and hierarchical methods: the learning of useful skill is guided by a single proxy reward, the design of which requires very minimal domain knowledge about the downstream tasks. Then a high-level policy is trained on top of these skills, providing a significant improvement of the exploration and allowing to tackle sparse rewards in the downstream tasks. To efficiently pre-train a large span of skills, we use Stochastic Neural Networks combined with an information-theoretic regularizer. Our experiments show that this combination is effective in learning a wide span of interpretable skills in a sample-efficient way, and can significantly boost the learning performance uniformly across a wide range of downstream tasks. Deep reinforcement learning has achieved many impressive results in recent years. However, tasks with sparse rewards or long horizons continue to pose significant challenges. To tackle these important problems, we propose a general framework that first learns useful skills in a pre-training environment, and then leverages the acquired skills for learning faster in downstream tasks. Our approach brings together some of the strengths of intrinsic motivation and hierarchical methods: the learning of useful skill is guided by a single proxy reward, the design of which requires very minimal domain knowledge about the downstream tasks. Then a high-level policy is trained on top of these skills, providing a significant improvement of the exploration and allowing to tackle sparse rewards in the downstream tasks. To efficiently pre-train a large span of skills, we use Stochastic Neural Networks combined with an information-theoretic regularizer. Our experiments show that this combination is effective in learning a wide span of interpretable skills in a sample-efficient way, and can significantly boost the learning performance uniformly across a wide range of downstream tasks.