Saturday, September 23, 2023

Toyota upends robot learning: New AI masters complex tasks in hours

Very recommendable! Are we witnessing a major breakthrough! Apparently!

"Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced a breakthrough generative AI approach based on Diffusion Policy to quickly and confidently teach robots new, dexterous skills. This advancement significantly improves robot utility and is a step towards building “Large Behavior Models (LBMs)” for robots, analogous to the Large Language Models (LLMs) that have recently revolutionized conversational AI. ...
“This new teaching technique is both very efficient and produces very high performing behaviors, enabling robots to much more effectively amplify people in many ways.”
Previous state-of-the-art techniques to teach robots new behaviors were slow, inconsistent, inefficient, and often limited to narrowly defined tasks performed in highly constrained environments. Roboticists needed to spend many hours writing sophisticated code and/or using numerous trial and error cycles to program behaviors.
TRI has already taught robots more than 60 difficult, dexterous skills using the new approach, including pouring liquids, using tools, and manipulating deformable objects. These achievements were realized without writing a single line of new code; the only change was supplying the robot with new data. Building on this success, TRI has set an ambitious target of teaching hundreds of new skills by the end of the year and 1,000 by the end of 2024. ...
TRI’s robot behavior model learns from haptic demonstrations from a teacher, combined with a language description of the goal. It then uses an AI-based Diffusion Policy to learn the demonstrated skill. This process allows a new behavior to be deployed autonomously from dozens of demonstrations. Not only does this approach produce consistent, repeatable, and performant results, but it does so with tremendous speed. ..."

Toyota upends robot learning: New AI masters complex tasks in hours

Toyota Research Institute Unveils Breakthrough in Teaching Robots New Behaviors (primary news source) New Generative AI Technique Brings Researchers One Step Closer to Building a “Large Behavior Model”

Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion (open access) I am looking forward to read this paper.


The new learning system is mastering a range of complex two-handed tasks involving tools, like this egg beater


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