Abstract

Robotics is a fantastic testbed for both RL theory and RL practice.  We have some problems (e.g. a humanoid doing a backflip) that look very hard, but model-based control performs quite well.  We have other problems that really shouldn’t be that hard (e.g. spreading peanut butter on toast), where model-based control falls short.  I’ll discuss a key theoretical sticking points; progress here might unlock practical success.  I’m excited to see what you come up with this fall!

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Video Recording