Interactive Robot Training for Non-Markov Tasks

Ankit Shah, Samir Wadhwania, Julie Shah

Abstract: Defining sound and complete specifications for robots using formal languages is challenging, while learning formal specifications directly from demonstrations can lead to over-constrained task policies. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian interactive robot training framework that allows the robot to learn from both demonstrations provided by a teacher, and that teacher's assessments of the robot's task executions. We also present an active learning approach--inspired by uncertainty sampling--to identify the task execution with the most uncertain degree of acceptability. Through a simulated experiment, we demonstrate that our active learning approach identifies a teacher's intended task specification with an equivalent or greater similarity when compared to an approach that learns purely from demonstrations. Finally, we demonstrate the efficacy of our approach in a real-world setting through a user-study based on teaching a robot to set a dinner table.