IIFL: Implicit Interactive Fleet Learning from Heterogeneous Human Supervisors

Imitation learning has been applied to a range of robotic tasks, but can struggle when (1) robots encounter edge cases that are not represented in the training data (distribution shift) or (2) the human demonstrations are heterogeneous: taking different paths around an obstacle, for instance (multimodality). Interactive fleet learning (IFL) mitigates distribution shift by allowing robots to access remote human teleoperators during task execution and learn from them over time, but is not equipped to handle multimodality. Recent work proposes Implicit Behavior Cloning (IBC), which is able to represent multimodal demonstrations using energy-based models (EBMs). In this work, we propose addressing both multimodality and distribution shift with Implicit Interactive Fleet Learning (IIFL), the first extension of implicit policies to interactive imitation learning (including the single-robot, single-human setting). IIFL quantifies uncertainty using a novel application of Jeffreys divergence to EBMs. While IIFL is more computationally expensive than explicit methods, results suggest that IIFL achieves 4.5x higher return on human effort in simulation experiments and an 80% higher success rate in a physical block pushing task over (Explicit) IFL, IBC, and other baselines when human supervision is heterogeneous.

SGTM 2.0: Autonomously Untangling Long Cables using Interactive Perception

Cables are commonplace in homes, hospitals, and industrial warehouses and are prone to tangling. This paper extends prior work on autonomously untangling long cables by introducing novel uncertainty quantification metrics and actions that interact with the cable to reduce perception uncertainty. We present Sliding and Grasping for Tangle Manipulation 2.0 (SGTM 2.0), a system that autonomously untangles cables approximately 3 meters in length with a bilateral robot using estimates of uncertainty at each step to inform actions. By interactively reducing uncertainty, Sliding and Grasping for Tangle Manipulation 2.0 (SGTM 2.0) reduces the number of state-resetting moves it must take, significantly speeding up run-time. Experiments suggest that SGTM 2.0 can achieve 83% untangling success on cables with 1 or 2 overhand and figure-8 knots, and 70% termination detection success across these configurations, outperforming SGTM 1.0 by 43% in untangling accuracy and 200% in full rollout speed. Supplementary material, visualizations, and videos can be found at sites.google.com/view/sgtm2.