Malleable Agents for Re-Configurable Robotic Manipulators

Athindran Ramesh Kumar, Gurudutt Hosangadi

Abstract: Re-configurable robots have more utility and flexibility for many real-world tasks. Designing a learning agent to operate such robots requires adapting to different configurations. Here, we focus on robotic arms with multiple rigid links connected by joints. We propose a deep reinforcement learning agent with sequence neural networks embedded in the agent to adapt to robotic arms that have a varying number of links. Further, with the additional tool of domain randomization, this agent adapts to different configurations. We perform simulations on a 2D N-link arm to show the ability of our network to transfer and generalize efficiently.