Leveraging Sequentiality in Reinforcement Learning from a Single Demonstration

Deep Reinforcement Learning has been successfully applied to learn robotic control. However, the corresponding algorithms struggle when applied to problems where the agent is only rewarded after achieving a complex task. In this context, using demonstrations can significantly speed up the learning process, but demonstrations can be costly to acquire. In this paper, we propose to leverage a sequential bias to learn control policies for complex robotic tasks using a single demonstration. To do so, our method learns a goal-conditioned policy to control a system between successive low-dimensional goals. This sequential goal-reaching approach raises a problem of compatibility between successive goals: we need to ensure that the state resulting from reaching a goal is compatible with the achievement of the following goals. To tackle this problem, we present a new algorithm called DCIL-II. We show that DCIL-II can solve with unprecedented sample efficiency some challenging simulated tasks such as humanoid locomotion and stand-up as well as fast running with a simulated Cassie robot. Our method leveraging sequentiality is a step towards the resolution of complex robotic tasks under minimal specification effort, a key feature for the next generation of autonomous robots.