TTA-Nav: Test-time Adaptive Reconstruction for Point-Goal Navigation under Visual Corruptions

Robot navigation under visual corruption presents a formidable challenge. To address this, we propose a Test-time Adaptation (TTA) method, named as TTA-Nav, for point-goal navigation under visual corruptions. Our "plug-and-play" method incorporates a top-down decoder to a pre-trained navigation model. Firstly, the pre-trained navigation model gets a corrupted image and extracts features. Secondly, the top-down decoder produces the reconstruction given the high-level features extracted by the pre-trained model. Then, it feeds the reconstruction of a corrupted image back to the pre-trained model. Finally, the pre-trained model does forward pass again to output action. Despite being trained solely on clean images, the top-down decoder can reconstruct cleaner images from corrupted ones without the need for gradient-based adaptation. The pre-trained navigation model with our top-down decoder significantly enhances navigation performance across almost all visual corruptions in our benchmarks. Our method improves the success rate of point-goal navigation from the state-of-the-art result of 46% to 94% on the most severe corruption. This suggests its potential for broader application in robotic visual navigation. Project page: https://sites.google.com/view/tta-nav

Impact of Computation in Integral Reinforcement Learning for Continuous-Time Control

Integral reinforcement learning (IntRL) demands the precise computation of the utility function's integral at its policy evaluation (PEV) stage. This is achieved through quadrature rules, which are weighted sums of utility functions evaluated from state samples obtained in discrete time. Our research reveals a critical yet underexplored phenomenon: the choice of the computational method -- in this case, the quadrature rule -- can significantly impact control performance. This impact is traced back to the fact that computational errors introduced in the PEV stage can affect the policy iteration's convergence behavior, which in turn affects the learned controller. To elucidate how computation impacts control, we draw a parallel between IntRL's policy iteration and Newton's method applied to the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. In this light, computational error in PEV manifests as an extra error term in each iteration of Newton's method, with its upper bound proportional to the computational error. Further, we demonstrate that when the utility function resides in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS), the optimal quadrature is achievable by employing Bayesian quadrature with the RKHS-inducing kernel function. We prove that the local convergence rates for IntRL using the trapezoidal rule and Bayesian quadrature with a Mat\'ern kernel to be $O(N^{-2})$ and $O(N^{-b})$, where $N$ is the number of evenly-spaced samples and $b$ is the Mat\'ern kernel's smoothness parameter. These theoretical findings are finally validated by two canonical control tasks.

Open Ad Hoc Teamwork with Cooperative Game Theory

Ad hoc teamwork poses a challenging problem, requiring the design of an agent to collaborate with teammates without prior coordination or joint training. Open ad hoc teamwork further complicates this challenge by considering environments with a changing number of teammates, referred to as open teams. The state-of-the-art solution to this problem is graph-based policy learning (GPL), leveraging the generalizability of graph neural networks to handle an unrestricted number of agents and effectively address open teams. GPL's performance is superior to other methods, but its joint Q-value representation presents challenges for interpretation, hindering further development of this research line and applicability. In this paper, we establish a new theory to give an interpretation for the joint Q-value representation employed in GPL, from the perspective of cooperative game theory. Building on our theory, we propose a novel algorithm based on GPL framework, to complement the critical features that facilitate learning, but overlooked in GPL. Through experiments, we demonstrate the correctness of our theory by comparing the performance of the resulting algorithm with GPL in dynamic team compositions.

Aligning Individual and Collective Objectives in Multi-Agent Cooperation

In the field of multi-agent learning, the challenge of mixed-motive cooperation is pronounced, given the inherent contradictions between individual and collective goals. Current research in this domain primarily focuses on incorporating domain knowledge into rewards or introducing additional mechanisms to foster cooperation. However, many of these methods suffer from the drawbacks of manual design costs and the lack of a theoretical grounding convergence procedure to the solution. To address this gap, we approach the mixed-motive game by modeling it as a differentiable game to study learning dynamics. We introduce a novel optimization method named Altruistic Gradient Adjustment (AgA) that employs gradient adjustments to novelly align individual and collective objectives. Furthermore, we provide theoretical proof that the selection of an appropriate alignment weight in AgA can accelerate convergence towards the desired solutions while effectively avoiding the undesired ones. The visualization of learning dynamics effectively demonstrates that AgA successfully achieves alignment between individual and collective objectives. Additionally, through evaluations conducted on established mixed-motive benchmarks such as the public good game, Cleanup, Harvest, and our modified mixed-motive SMAC environment, we validate AgA's capability to facilitate altruistic and fair collaboration.

NiSNN-A: Non-iterative Spiking Neural Networks with Attention with Application to Motor Imagery EEG Classification

Motor imagery, an important category in electroencephalogram (EEG) research, often intersects with scenarios demanding low energy consumption, such as portable medical devices and isolated environment operations. Traditional deep learning algorithms, despite their effectiveness, are characterized by significant computational demands accompanied by high energy usage. As an alternative, spiking neural networks (SNNs), inspired by the biological functions of the brain, emerge as a promising energy-efficient solution. However, SNNs typically exhibit lower accuracy than their counterpart convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Although attention mechanisms successfully increase network accuracy by focusing on relevant features, their integration in the SNN framework remains an open question. In this work, we combine the SNN and the attention mechanisms for the EEG classification, aiming to improve precision and reduce energy consumption. To this end, we first propose a Non-iterative Leaky Integrate-and-Fire (LIF) neuron model, overcoming the gradient issues in the traditional SNNs using the Iterative LIF neurons. Then, we introduce the sequence-based attention mechanisms to refine the feature map. We evaluated the proposed Non-iterative SNN with Attention (NiSNN-A) model on OpenBMI, a large-scale motor imagery dataset. Experiment results demonstrate that 1) our model outperforms other SNN models by achieving higher accuracy, 2) our model increases energy efficiency compared to the counterpart CNN models (i.e., by 2.27 times) while maintaining comparable accuracy.

Language and Sketching: An LLM-driven Interactive Multimodal Multitask Robot Navigation Framework

The socially-aware navigation system has evolved to adeptly avoid various obstacles while performing multiple tasks, such as point-to-point navigation, human-following, and -guiding. However, a prominent gap persists: in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), the procedure of communicating commands to robots demands intricate mathematical formulations. Furthermore, the transition between tasks does not quite possess the intuitive control and user-centric interactivity that one would desire. In this work, we propose an LLM-driven interactive multimodal multitask robot navigation framework, termed LIM2N, to solve the above new challenge in the navigation field. We achieve this by first introducing a multimodal interaction framework where language and hand-drawn inputs can serve as navigation constraints and control objectives. Next, a reinforcement learning agent is built to handle multiple tasks with the received information. Crucially, LIM2N creates smooth cooperation among the reasoning of multimodal input, multitask planning, and adaptation and processing of the intelligent sensing modules in the complicated system. Extensive experiments are conducted in both simulation and the real world demonstrating that LIM2N has superior user needs understanding, alongside an enhanced interactive experience.

Deep Bayesian Reinforcement Learning for Spacecraft Proximity Maneuvers and Docking

In the pursuit of autonomous spacecraft proximity maneuvers and docking(PMD), we introduce a novel Bayesian actor-critic reinforcement learning algorithm to learn a control policy with the stability guarantee. The PMD task is formulated as a Markov decision process that reflects the relative dynamic model, the docking cone and the cost function. Drawing from the principles of Lyapunov theory, we frame the temporal difference learning as a constrained Gaussian process regression problem. This innovative approach allows the state-value function to be expressed as a Lyapunov function, leveraging the Gaussian process and deep kernel learning. We develop a novel Bayesian quadrature policy optimization procedure to analytically compute the policy gradient while integrating Lyapunov-based stability constraints. This integration is pivotal in satisfying the rigorous safety demands of spaceflight missions. The proposed algorithm has been experimentally evaluated on a spacecraft air-bearing testbed and shows impressive and promising performance.

DACOOP-A: Decentralized Adaptive Cooperative Pursuit via Attention

Integrating rule-based policies into reinforcement learning promises to improve data efficiency and generalization in cooperative pursuit problems. However, most implementations do not properly distinguish the influence of neighboring robots in observation embedding or inter-robot interaction rules, leading to information loss and inefficient cooperation. This paper proposes a cooperative pursuit algorithm named Decentralized Adaptive COOperative Pursuit via Attention (DACOOP-A) by empowering reinforcement learning with artificial potential field and attention mechanisms. An attention-based framework is developed to emphasize important neighbors by concurrently integrating the learned attention scores into observation embedding and inter-robot interaction rules. A KL divergence regularization is introduced to alleviate the resultant learning stability issue. Improvements in data efficiency and generalization are demonstrated through numerical simulations. Extensive quantitative analysis and ablation studies are performed to illustrate the advantages of the proposed modules. Real-world experiments are performed to justify the feasibility of deploying DACOOP-A in physical systems.

Causal Discovery with Generalized Linear Models through Peeling Algorithms

This article presents a novel method for causal discovery with generalized structural equation models suited for analyzing diverse types of outcomes, including discrete, continuous, and mixed data. Causal discovery often faces challenges due to unmeasured confounders that hinder the identification of causal relationships. The proposed approach addresses this issue by developing two peeling algorithms (bottom-up and top-down) to ascertain causal relationships and valid instruments. This approach first reconstructs a super-graph to represent ancestral relationships between variables, using a peeling algorithm based on nodewise GLM regressions that exploit relationships between primary and instrumental variables. Then, it estimates parent-child effects from the ancestral relationships using another peeling algorithm while deconfounding a child's model with information borrowed from its parents' models. The article offers a theoretical analysis of the proposed approach, which establishes conditions for model identifiability and provides statistical guarantees for accurately discovering parent-child relationships via the peeling algorithms. Furthermore, the article presents numerical experiments showcasing the effectiveness of our approach in comparison to state-of-the-art structure learning methods without confounders. Lastly, it demonstrates an application to Alzheimer's disease (AD), highlighting the utility of the method in constructing gene-to-gene and gene-to-disease regulatory networks involving Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) for healthy and AD subjects.