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NIPS
2008

Policy Search for Motor Primitives in Robotics

13 years 5 months ago
Policy Search for Motor Primitives in Robotics
Many motor skills in humanoid robotics can be learned using parametrized motor primitives as done in imitation learning. However, most interesting motor learning problems are high-dimensional reinforcement learning problems often beyond the reach of current methods. In this paper, we extend previous work on policy learning from the immediate reward case to episodic reinforcement learning. We show that this results in a general, common framework also connected to policy gradient methods and yielding a novel algorithm for policy learning that is particularly well-suited for dynamic motor primitives. The resulting algorithm is an EM-inspired algorithm applicable to complex motor learning tasks. We compare this algorithm to several well-known parametrized policy search methods and show that it outperforms them. We apply it in the context of motor learning and show that it can learn a complex Ball-in-a-Cup task using a real Barrett WAMTM robot arm.
Jens Kober, Jan Peters
Added 29 Oct 2010
Updated 29 Oct 2010
Type Conference
Year 2008
Where NIPS
Authors Jens Kober, Jan Peters
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