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The videos seem to have strong control flavour. What's the hook for AI researchers?

robotresearcher 9y ago
Gait control is widely recognized as on-topic in AI robotics circles. There are sessions on this topic at the main conferences, for example.
- gradstudent 9y ago
  Well, yes, but getting robots to move without falling over is not really a core AI topic; it's an application area where some AI stuff happens to be useful. Coming from a site with a name like "Open AI" I expected some software to help promote research on workhorse AI topics such as search, planning, constraint programming, knowledge representation and automated reasoning.
  - traverseda 9y ago
    >Coming from a site with a name like "Open AI" I expected some software to help promote research Really? I'd expect some stuff that helps me integrate AI into whatever it is I'm building.
    - robotresearcher 9y ago
      They are a privately funded research organization. It doesn't make sense to expect anything. We can just watch with interest.
  - robotresearcher 9y ago
    > getting robots to move without falling over is not really a core AI topic Animals solve the problem wonderfully every day, using (at least partly) their brains. That's a working definition of an AI problem.
    - gradstudent 9y ago
      Robotics is not a core problem for AI. It's not even a core problem for Comp Sci. There's a whole bunch of kinematics and dynamics at play which are completely besides the point for most AI people. The only thing (some) AI folks care about is the control problems that arise in Robotics but the development of suitable methods to solve these comprises, I would argue, a rather small and not representative part of the field.
      - robotresearcher 9y ago
        > Robotics is not a core problem for AI. I respectfully, but firmly, disagree. Robotics has always been at the center of the AI vision, for academics and in culture. There's a movie called 'AI'. It's not about automatic labelling of YouTube videos or 2-sat. Planning and reasoning more your kind of AI? Seminal AI tech STRIPS and A* were invented to drive Shakey the robot. Shakey also had very early computer vision. Hardly anyone would claim that self-driving cars - robots with people inside - are not AI, and a pretty compelling bit of AI right now.
        gradstudent 9y ago
        > I respectfully, but firmly, disagree. Please pay attention: Robotics is just one application area for AI. Core problems from Robotics may influence the field of AI but they don't define it. Gait control or vision are or what have you are only interesting for AI people insofar as they can be used to study automated reasoning. The core problems of AI are the same as those of Computer Science: search, sort and computability.
        robotresearcher 9y ago
        'Please pay attention' Hilarious. Please continue to school me on the nature and basis of artificial intelligence.
        gradstudent 9y ago
dpf 9y ago
These environments are often used as a testbed for reinforcement learning, e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05477 https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05477
- deepnet 9y ago
  "However, a policy that succeeds in simulation often doesn't work when deployed on a real robot. Nevertheless, often the overall gist of what the policy does in simulation remains valid in the real world. In this paper we investigate such settings, where the sequence of states traversed in simulation remains reasonable for the real world, even if the details of the controls are not, as could be the case when the key differences lie in detailed friction, contact, mass and geometry properties" from Transfer from Simulation to Real World through Learning Deep Inverse Dynamics Model https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.03518 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.03518 by Christiano, Shah, Mordatch, Schneider, Blackwell, Tobin, Abbeel, & Zaremba

Gait control is widely recognized as on-topic in AI robotics circles. There are sessions on this topic at the main conferences, for example.

gradstudent 9y ago
Well, yes, but getting robots to move without falling over is not really a core AI topic; it's an application area where some AI stuff happens to be useful. Coming from a site with a name like "Open AI" I expected some software to help promote research on workhorse AI topics such as search, planning, constraint programming, knowledge representation and automated reasoning.
- traverseda 9y ago
  >Coming from a site with a name like "Open AI" I expected some software to help promote research Really? I'd expect some stuff that helps me integrate AI into whatever it is I'm building.
  - robotresearcher 9y ago
    They are a privately funded research organization. It doesn't make sense to expect anything. We can just watch with interest.
- robotresearcher 9y ago
  > getting robots to move without falling over is not really a core AI topic Animals solve the problem wonderfully every day, using (at least partly) their brains. That's a working definition of an AI problem.
  - gradstudent 9y ago
    Robotics is not a core problem for AI. It's not even a core problem for Comp Sci. There's a whole bunch of kinematics and dynamics at play which are completely besides the point for most AI people. The only thing (some) AI folks care about is the control problems that arise in Robotics but the development of suitable methods to solve these comprises, I would argue, a rather small and not representative part of the field.
    - robotresearcher 9y ago
      > Robotics is not a core problem for AI. I respectfully, but firmly, disagree. Robotics has always been at the center of the AI vision, for academics and in culture. There's a movie called 'AI'. It's not about automatic labelling of YouTube videos or 2-sat. Planning and reasoning more your kind of AI? Seminal AI tech STRIPS and A* were invented to drive Shakey the robot. Shakey also had very early computer vision. Hardly anyone would claim that self-driving cars - robots with people inside - are not AI, and a pretty compelling bit of AI right now.
      - gradstudent 9y ago
        > I respectfully, but firmly, disagree. Please pay attention: Robotics is just one application area for AI. Core problems from Robotics may influence the field of AI but they don't define it. Gait control or vision are or what have you are only interesting for AI people insofar as they can be used to study automated reasoning. The core problems of AI are the same as those of Computer Science: search, sort and computability.
        robotresearcher 9y ago
        'Please pay attention' Hilarious. Please continue to school me on the nature and basis of artificial intelligence.
        gradstudent 9y ago

dpf 9y ago

These environments are often used as a testbed for reinforcement learning, e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05477 https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05477

deepnet 9y ago
"However, a policy that succeeds in simulation often doesn't work when deployed on a real robot. Nevertheless, often the overall gist of what the policy does in simulation remains valid in the real world. In this paper we investigate such settings, where the sequence of states traversed in simulation remains reasonable for the real world, even if the details of the controls are not, as could be the case when the key differences lie in detailed friction, contact, mass and geometry properties" from Transfer from Simulation to Real World through Learning Deep Inverse Dynamics Model https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.03518 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.03518 by Christiano, Shah, Mordatch, Schneider, Blackwell, Tobin, Abbeel, & Zaremba