Global Navigation Using Predictable and Slow Feature Analysis in Multiroom Environments, Path Planning and Other Control Tasks

TL;DR

This paper introduces an extension of Predictable Feature Analysis (PFAx) combined with Slow Feature Analysis (SFA) to enable stable, global navigation in multiroom environments through hierarchical task decomposition and minimal environment exploration.

Contribution

It develops a novel SFA-based environment structuring algorithm that enables global navigation with PFAx, supported by theoretical analysis and practical applications.

Findings

The algorithm achieves efficient global navigation after a single environment exploration.

It decomposes navigation tasks into hierarchical subgoals for effective control.

Theoretical foundations support the stability and optimality of the approach.

Abstract

Extended Predictable Feature Analysis (PFAx) [Richthofer and Wiskott, 2017] is an extension of PFA [Richthofer and Wiskott, 2015] that allows generating a goal-directed control signal of an agent whose dynamics has previously been learned during a training phase in an unsupervised manner. PFAx hardly requires assumptions or prior knowledge of the agent's sensor or control mechanics, or of the environment. It selects features from a high-dimensional input by intrinsic predictability and organizes them into a reasonably low-dimensional model. While PFA obtains a well predictable model, PFAx yields a model ideally suited for manipulations with predictable outcome. This allows for goal-directed manipulation of an agent and thus for local navigation, i.e. for reaching states where intermediate actions can be chosen by a permanent descent of distance to the goal. The approach is limited when it comes to global navigation, e.g. involving obstacles or multiple rooms. In this article, we extend theoretical results from [Sprekeler and Wiskott, 2008], enabling PFAx to perform stable global navigation. So far, the most widely exploited characteristic of Slow Feature Analysis (SFA) was that slowness yields invariances. We focus on another fundamental characteristics of slow signals: They tend to yield monotonicity and one significant property of monotonicity is that local optimization is sufficient to find a global optimum. We present an SFA-based algorithm that structures an environment such that navigation tasks hierarchically decompose into subgoals. Each of these can be efficiently achieved by PFAx, yielding an overall global solution of the task. The algorithm needs to explore and process an environment only once and can then perform all sorts of navigation tasks efficiently. We support this algorithm by mathematical theory and apply it to different problems.