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Theia: Distilling Diverse Vision Foundation Models for Robot Learning (2407.20179v2)

Published 29 Jul 2024 in cs.RO, cs.AI, cs.CV, and cs.LG

Abstract: Vision-based robot policy learning, which maps visual inputs to actions, necessitates a holistic understanding of diverse visual tasks beyond single-task needs like classification or segmentation. Inspired by this, we introduce Theia, a vision foundation model for robot learning that distills multiple off-the-shelf vision foundation models trained on varied vision tasks. Theia's rich visual representations encode diverse visual knowledge, enhancing downstream robot learning. Extensive experiments demonstrate that Theia outperforms its teacher models and prior robot learning models using less training data and smaller model sizes. Additionally, we quantify the quality of pre-trained visual representations and hypothesize that higher entropy in feature norm distributions leads to improved robot learning performance. Code, models, and demo are available at https://theia.theaiinstitute.com.

Citations (9)

Summary

  • The paper introduces Theia, a compact model that distills diverse vision foundation models to enhance robot learning.
  • Utilizing cosine and smooth-L1 losses with ViT backbones, Theia achieves superior performance with reduced computational overhead.
  • Preserving spatial features from models like CLIP and DINOv2, Theia significantly improves task-specific representation quality for robotic applications.

Theia: Distilling Diverse Vision Foundation Models for Robot Learning

The paper introduces "Theia," a vision foundation model (VFM) designed to optimize visual representations for robot learning applications. Theia achieves this by distilling multiple pre-existing VFMs into a smaller, yet more potent, model tailored specifically for various robot learning tasks. This distillation enhances visual representation quality while maintaining computational efficiency.

Context and Motivation

Traditionally, vision-based robot policy learning requires mapping complex visual inputs to actionable policies. This necessitates strong and comprehensive visual understanding, covering a spectrum of tasks from object recognition to semantic grounding and spatial reasoning. However, no single VFM efficiently addresses the diverse requirements of robot learning. Standard VFMs like CLIP and DINOv2, while excellent in their respective tasks, often fall short when applied directly to robot learning scenarios due to the gap between their training tasks and the implicit visual requirements of robotics.

Previous researches have focused on improving VFMs by augmenting training data or modifying objective functions. Yet, there remains a significant gap in leveraging multiple VFMs concurrently to enhance their collective utility in robot learning.

Overview of Theia

Theia is designed to distill the knowledge embedded in multiple VFMs, creating a robust model that excels in robot learning tasks. Utilizing knowledge distillation techniques, Theia integrates visual representations from several teacher models like CLIP, DINOv2, and ViT. The distilled representations, referred to as Theia-representations, encode spatial features rather than relying solely on aggregate tokens such as the [CLS] token.

Architecture and Training

Theia's architecture comprises a visual encoder built on ViT backbones (ViT-Tiny, Small, Base) and feature translators, which are shallow CNN networks used to map Theia-representations to their corresponding VFM features. Theia extracts spatial features from input images, maintaining detailed visual information essential for subsequent tasks. By retaining a higher entropy in representation norms, Theia hypotheses that this diversity correlates positively with improved robot learning performance.

Training Theia involves distilling representations from teacher VFMs using a combination of cosine and smooth-L1 losses. This process is computationally efficient, requiring significantly less training data and GPU hours compared to existing models, such as RADIO.

Experiments and Results

To validate Theia, the authors conducted extensive evaluations using CortexBench, including both simulated (MuJoCo, Habitat, Trifinger) and real-world robot learning tasks. The key evaluations include:

  1. Simulation Results: Theia's performance on the MuJoCo subset of CortexBench demonstrated superiority over prior models, achieving higher mean scores with less computational overhead. This was evident across various model scales (Tiny, Small, Base).
  2. Impact of Spatial Tokens: The paper confirms that spatial tokens consistently yield better performance over the [CLS] token, emphasizing the importance of preserving spatial information in visual representations.
  3. Effective Teacher Models: Among the VFMs, the combination of CLIP, DINOv2, and ViT yielded the best results when distilled into Theia, underscoring the synergistic effect of distilling complementary models.
  4. Real-World Tasks: Theia exhibited superior success rates in real-world tasks such as Door Opening, Pick-and-Place, Toy-Microwave Cooking, and Drawer Opening, validating its practical applicability.

Analysis and Implications

One of the significant findings of this research is the high correlation between the entropy of feature norm distributions and downstream robot learning performance. This insight into representation quality provides a clearer understanding of what makes visual representations effective for robot learning, guiding future research towards optimizing these characteristics.

Future Prospects

Theia sets a solid foundation for future developments in robot learning applications. Potential future directions include:

  • Extending the distillation framework to encompass more complex and diverse VFMs.
  • Investigating the integration of Theia with real-world robotic systems and more varied benchmarks.
  • Exploring the impact of further enhancing the diversity of training datasets and architectural variations.

Conclusion

Theia represents a significant advancement in leveraging multiple VFMs for improved robot learning. By distilling rich spatial representations from varied VFMs, Theia demonstrates superior performance in both simulated and real-world tasks while maintaining computational efficiency. The insights gained from this work, particularly regarding representation norm entropy, significantly contribute to our understanding of effective visual representation in robotics, paving the way for future innovations in AI-driven robotic systems.

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