Learning to Plan by Learning Rules

Many environments involve following rules and tasks; for example, a chef cooking a dish follows a recipe, and a person driving follows rules of the road. People are naturally fluent with rules: we can learn rules efficiently; we can follow rules; we can interpret rules and explain them to others; an...

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Main Author: Araki, Minoru Brandon
Other Authors: Rus, Daniela
Format: Thesis
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2022
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139998
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author Araki, Minoru Brandon
author2 Rus, Daniela
author_facet Rus, Daniela
Araki, Minoru Brandon
author_sort Araki, Minoru Brandon
collection MIT
description Many environments involve following rules and tasks; for example, a chef cooking a dish follows a recipe, and a person driving follows rules of the road. People are naturally fluent with rules: we can learn rules efficiently; we can follow rules; we can interpret rules and explain them to others; and we can rapidly adjust to modified rules such as a new recipe without needing to relearn everything from scratch. By contrast, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms are ill-suited to learning policies in rule-based environments, as satisfying rules often involves executing lengthy tasks with sparse rewards. Furthermore, learned DRL policies are difficult if not impossible to interpret and are not composable. The aim of this thesis is to develop a reinforcement learning framework for rule-based environments that can efficiently learn policies that are interpretable, satisfying, and composable. We achieve interpretability by representing rules as automata or Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulas in a hierarchical Markov Decision Process (MDP). We achieve satisfaction by planning over the hierarchical MDP using a modified version of value iteration. We achieve composability by building off of a hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL) framework called the options framework, in which low-level options can be composed arbitrarily. And lastly, we achieve data-efficient learning by integrating our HRL framework into a Bayesian model that can infer a distribution over LTL formulas given a low-level environment and a set of expert trajectories. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach via a number of rule-learning and planning experiments in both simulated and real-world environments.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1399982022-02-08T04:06:01Z Learning to Plan by Learning Rules Araki, Minoru Brandon Rus, Daniela Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Many environments involve following rules and tasks; for example, a chef cooking a dish follows a recipe, and a person driving follows rules of the road. People are naturally fluent with rules: we can learn rules efficiently; we can follow rules; we can interpret rules and explain them to others; and we can rapidly adjust to modified rules such as a new recipe without needing to relearn everything from scratch. By contrast, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms are ill-suited to learning policies in rule-based environments, as satisfying rules often involves executing lengthy tasks with sparse rewards. Furthermore, learned DRL policies are difficult if not impossible to interpret and are not composable. The aim of this thesis is to develop a reinforcement learning framework for rule-based environments that can efficiently learn policies that are interpretable, satisfying, and composable. We achieve interpretability by representing rules as automata or Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulas in a hierarchical Markov Decision Process (MDP). We achieve satisfaction by planning over the hierarchical MDP using a modified version of value iteration. We achieve composability by building off of a hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL) framework called the options framework, in which low-level options can be composed arbitrarily. And lastly, we achieve data-efficient learning by integrating our HRL framework into a Bayesian model that can infer a distribution over LTL formulas given a low-level environment and a set of expert trajectories. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach via a number of rule-learning and planning experiments in both simulated and real-world environments. Ph.D. 2022-02-07T15:18:00Z 2022-02-07T15:18:00Z 2021-09 2021-09-21T19:30:47.529Z Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139998 In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted Copyright MIT http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/ application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Araki, Minoru Brandon
Learning to Plan by Learning Rules
title Learning to Plan by Learning Rules
title_full Learning to Plan by Learning Rules
title_fullStr Learning to Plan by Learning Rules
title_full_unstemmed Learning to Plan by Learning Rules
title_short Learning to Plan by Learning Rules
title_sort learning to plan by learning rules
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139998
work_keys_str_mv AT arakiminorubrandon learningtoplanbylearningrules