Learning from Demonstrations and Human Evaluative Feedbacks: Handling Sparsity and Imperfection Using Inverse Reinforcement Learning Approach

Programming by demonstrations is one of the most efficient methods for knowledge transfer to develop advanced learning systems, provided that teachers deliver abundant and correct demonstrations, and learners correctly perceive them. Nevertheless, demonstrations are sparse and inaccurate in almost a...

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Main Authors: Nafee Mourad, Ali Ezzeddine, Babak Nadjar Araabi, Majid Nili Ahmadabadi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2020-01-01
Series:Journal of Robotics
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2020/3849309
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author Nafee Mourad
Ali Ezzeddine
Babak Nadjar Araabi
Majid Nili Ahmadabadi
author_facet Nafee Mourad
Ali Ezzeddine
Babak Nadjar Araabi
Majid Nili Ahmadabadi
author_sort Nafee Mourad
collection DOAJ
description Programming by demonstrations is one of the most efficient methods for knowledge transfer to develop advanced learning systems, provided that teachers deliver abundant and correct demonstrations, and learners correctly perceive them. Nevertheless, demonstrations are sparse and inaccurate in almost all real-world problems. Complementary information is needed to compensate these shortcomings of demonstrations. In this paper, we target programming by a combination of nonoptimal and sparse demonstrations and a limited number of binary evaluative feedbacks, where the learner uses its own evaluated experiences as new demonstrations in an extended inverse reinforcement learning method. This provides the learner with a broader generalization and less regret as well as robustness in face of sparsity and nonoptimality in demonstrations and feedbacks. Our method alleviates the unrealistic burden on teachers to provide optimal and abundant demonstrations. Employing an evaluative feedback, which is easy for teachers to deliver, provides the opportunity to correct the learner’s behavior in an interactive social setting without requiring teachers to know and use their own accurate reward function. Here, we enhance the inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) to estimate the reward function using a mixture of nonoptimal and sparse demonstrations and evaluative feedbacks. Our method, called IRL from demonstration and human’s critique (IRLDC), has two phases. The teacher first provides some demonstrations for the learner to initialize its policy. Next, the learner interacts with the environment and the teacher provides binary evaluative feedbacks. Taking into account possible inconsistencies and mistakes in issuing and receiving feedbacks, the learner revises the estimated reward function by solving a single optimization problem. The IRLDC is devised to handle errors and sparsities in demonstrations and feedbacks and can generalize different combinations of these two sources expertise. We apply our method to three domains: a simulated navigation task, a simulated car driving problem with human interactions, and a navigation experiment of a mobile robot. The results indicate that the IRLDC significantly enhances the learning process where the standard IRL methods fail and learning from feedbacks (LfF) methods has a high regret. Also, the IRLDC works well at different levels of sparsity and optimality of the teacher’s demonstrations and feedbacks, where other state-of-the-art methods fail.
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spelling doaj-art-b18600c504f84c9ea356e2208464cc5e2025-02-03T01:05:21ZengWileyJournal of Robotics1687-96001687-96192020-01-01202010.1155/2020/38493093849309Learning from Demonstrations and Human Evaluative Feedbacks: Handling Sparsity and Imperfection Using Inverse Reinforcement Learning ApproachNafee Mourad0Ali Ezzeddine1Babak Nadjar Araabi2Majid Nili Ahmadabadi3Cognitive Systems Laboratory, School of ECE, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, IranMachine Learning and Computational Modeling Laboratory, School of ECE, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, IranMachine Learning and Computational Modeling Laboratory, School of ECE, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, IranCognitive Systems Laboratory, School of ECE, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, IranProgramming by demonstrations is one of the most efficient methods for knowledge transfer to develop advanced learning systems, provided that teachers deliver abundant and correct demonstrations, and learners correctly perceive them. Nevertheless, demonstrations are sparse and inaccurate in almost all real-world problems. Complementary information is needed to compensate these shortcomings of demonstrations. In this paper, we target programming by a combination of nonoptimal and sparse demonstrations and a limited number of binary evaluative feedbacks, where the learner uses its own evaluated experiences as new demonstrations in an extended inverse reinforcement learning method. This provides the learner with a broader generalization and less regret as well as robustness in face of sparsity and nonoptimality in demonstrations and feedbacks. Our method alleviates the unrealistic burden on teachers to provide optimal and abundant demonstrations. Employing an evaluative feedback, which is easy for teachers to deliver, provides the opportunity to correct the learner’s behavior in an interactive social setting without requiring teachers to know and use their own accurate reward function. Here, we enhance the inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) to estimate the reward function using a mixture of nonoptimal and sparse demonstrations and evaluative feedbacks. Our method, called IRL from demonstration and human’s critique (IRLDC), has two phases. The teacher first provides some demonstrations for the learner to initialize its policy. Next, the learner interacts with the environment and the teacher provides binary evaluative feedbacks. Taking into account possible inconsistencies and mistakes in issuing and receiving feedbacks, the learner revises the estimated reward function by solving a single optimization problem. The IRLDC is devised to handle errors and sparsities in demonstrations and feedbacks and can generalize different combinations of these two sources expertise. We apply our method to three domains: a simulated navigation task, a simulated car driving problem with human interactions, and a navigation experiment of a mobile robot. The results indicate that the IRLDC significantly enhances the learning process where the standard IRL methods fail and learning from feedbacks (LfF) methods has a high regret. Also, the IRLDC works well at different levels of sparsity and optimality of the teacher’s demonstrations and feedbacks, where other state-of-the-art methods fail.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2020/3849309
spellingShingle Nafee Mourad
Ali Ezzeddine
Babak Nadjar Araabi
Majid Nili Ahmadabadi
Learning from Demonstrations and Human Evaluative Feedbacks: Handling Sparsity and Imperfection Using Inverse Reinforcement Learning Approach
Journal of Robotics
title Learning from Demonstrations and Human Evaluative Feedbacks: Handling Sparsity and Imperfection Using Inverse Reinforcement Learning Approach
title_full Learning from Demonstrations and Human Evaluative Feedbacks: Handling Sparsity and Imperfection Using Inverse Reinforcement Learning Approach
title_fullStr Learning from Demonstrations and Human Evaluative Feedbacks: Handling Sparsity and Imperfection Using Inverse Reinforcement Learning Approach
title_full_unstemmed Learning from Demonstrations and Human Evaluative Feedbacks: Handling Sparsity and Imperfection Using Inverse Reinforcement Learning Approach
title_short Learning from Demonstrations and Human Evaluative Feedbacks: Handling Sparsity and Imperfection Using Inverse Reinforcement Learning Approach
title_sort learning from demonstrations and human evaluative feedbacks handling sparsity and imperfection using inverse reinforcement learning approach
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2020/3849309
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