Language Conditioned Imitation Learning over Unstructured Data (2005.07648v2)

Abstract: Natural language is perhaps the most flexible and intuitive way for humans to communicate tasks to a robot. Prior work in imitation learning typically requires each task be specified with a task id or goal image -- something that is often impractical in open-world environments. On the other hand, previous approaches in instruction following allow agent behavior to be guided by language, but typically assume structure in the observations, actuators, or language that limit their applicability to complex settings like robotics. In this work, we present a method for incorporating free-form natural language conditioning into imitation learning. Our approach learns perception from pixels, natural language understanding, and multitask continuous control end-to-end as a single neural network. Unlike prior work in imitation learning, our method is able to incorporate unlabeled and unstructured demonstration data (i.e. no task or language labels). We show this dramatically improves language conditioned performance, while reducing the cost of language annotation to less than 1% of total data. At test time, a single language conditioned visuomotor policy trained with our method can perform a wide variety of robotic manipulation skills in a 3D environment, specified only with natural language descriptions of each task (e.g. "open the drawer...now pick up the block...now press the green button..."). To scale up the number of instructions an agent can follow, we propose combining text conditioned policies with large pretrained neural LLMs. We find this allows a policy to be robust to many out-of-distribution synonym instructions, without requiring new demonstrations. See videos of a human typing live text commands to our agent at language-play.github.io

• The paper introduces a novel language-conditioned imitation learning framework that leverages unstructured data to improve robotic performance.
• It employs multimodal integration to accurately convert natural language instructions into actionable robot behaviors.
• The results highlight how conditioning imitation learning on language can significantly boost adaptability in complex tasks.

Overview of "Template Paper for the Robotics: Science and Systems Conference"

The manuscript titled "Template Paper for the Robotics: Science and Systems Conference" serves as a fundamental guide primarily intended to assist authors in preparing their submissions using the \LaTeX\ document preparation system, specifically, leveraging the IEEEtran.cls version 1.7a and later. This paper ostensibly functions as a procedural framework rather than presenting novel empirical findings or theoretical advancements in robotics. It caters to authors intending to submit to the Robotics: Science and Systems conference by elucidating the standardized format and crucial components of assembling a paper in compliance with specified guidelines.

Structural Elements and Formatting

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Enhancements through Hyperlinks

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Implications and Future Directions

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