ProbRobScene: A Probabilistic Specification Language for 3D Robotic Manipulation Environments

TL;DR

ProbRobScene is a probabilistic language that allows users to specify relational constraints in robotic environments, enabling automatic scene generation for simulation, debugging, and data augmentation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel probabilistic specification language for robotic environments that simplifies scene creation based on relational constraints.

Findings

Efficient sampling of environment spaces using probabilistic programming and convex geometry.

Successful debugging of a robotic controller in a tabletop manipulation task.

Demonstrated utility in simulation and data augmentation.

Abstract

Robotic control tasks are often first run in simulation for the purposes of verification, debugging and data augmentation. Many methods exist to specify what task a robot must complete, but few exist to specify what range of environments a user expects such tasks to be achieved in. ProbRobScene is a probabilistic specification language for describing robotic manipulation environments. Using the language, a user need only specify the relational constraints that must hold between objects in a scene. ProbRobScene will then automatically generate scenes which conform to this specification. By combining aspects of probabilistic programming languages and convex geometry, we provide a method for sampling this space of possible environments efficiently. We demonstrate the usefulness of our language by using it to debug a robotic controller in a tabletop robot manipulation environment.