Compositional RL Agents That Follow Language Commands in Temporal Logic

Abstract

We demonstrate how a reinforcement learning agent can use compositional recurrent neural networks to learn to carry out commands specified in linear temporal logic (LTL). Our approach takes as input an LTL formula, structures a deep network according to the parse of the formula, and determines satisfying actions. This compositional structure of the network enables zero-shot generalization to significantly more complex unseen formulas. We demonstrate this ability in multiple problem domains with both discrete and continuous state-action spaces. In a symbolic domain, the agent finds a sequence of letters that satisfy a specification. In a Minecraft-like environment, the agent finds a sequence of actions that conform to a formula. In the Fetch environment, the robot finds a sequence of arm configurations that move blocks on a table to fulfill the commands. While most prior work can learn to execute one formula reliably, we develop a novel form of multi-task learning for RL agents that allows them to learn from a diverse set of tasks and generalize to a new set of diverse tasks without any additional training. The compositional structures presented here are not specific to LTL, thus opening the path to RL agents that perform zero-shot generalization in other compositional domains.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 19, 2021
Accession Number
AD1203720

Entities

People

  • Andrei Barbu
  • Boris Katz
  • Yen-ling Kuo

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Algorithms
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Artificial Intelligence Software
  • Automata Theory
  • Computational Science
  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Science
  • Failure Mode And Effect Analysis
  • Feature Extraction
  • Formal Languages
  • Information Processing
  • Information Systems
  • Language
  • Machine Learning
  • Neural Networks
  • Recurrent Neural Networks
  • Reinforcement Learning
  • Standards
  • Test Sets
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Approximation Theory.
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Neural Network Machine Learning.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Neural Networks
  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - Autonomous System Control
  • Space
  • Space - Spacecraft Maneuvers