ProbRobScene: A Probabilistic Specification Language for 3D Robotic Manipulation Environments

Abstract: Robotic control tasks are often first run in simulation for the purposes of verification, debugging and data augmentation. Many methods exist to specify what task a robot must complete, but few exist to specify what range of environments a user expects such tasks to be achieved in. ProbRobScene is a probabilistic specification language for describing robotic manipulation environments. Using the language, a user need only specify the relational constraints that must hold between objects in a scene. ProbRobScene will then automatically generate scenes which conform to this specification. By combining aspects of probabilistic programming languages and convex geometry, we provide a method for sampling this space of possible environments efficiently. We demonstrate the usefulness of our language by using it to debug a robotic controller in a tabletop robot manipulation environment.