Dropout's Dream Land: Generalization from Learned Simulators to Reality

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method called Dropout's Dream Land that enhances the transfer of learned simulation environments to real-world applications by using dropout to generate diverse dream environments, improving generalization.

Contribution

It proposes a new approach to improve sim-to-real transfer by leveraging dropout during training to create varied dream environments without additional costs.

Findings

Dropout's Dream Land effectively bridges the reality gap.

The method outperforms traditional domain randomization techniques.

Extensive ablation studies validate the approach.

Abstract

A World Model is a generative model used to simulate an environment. World Models have proven capable of learning spatial and temporal representations of Reinforcement Learning environments. In some cases, a World Model offers an agent the opportunity to learn entirely inside of its own dream environment. In this work we explore improving the generalization capabilities from dream environments to real environments (Dream2Real). We present a general approach to improve a controller's ability to transfer from a neural network dream environment to reality at little additional cost. These improvements are gained by drawing on inspiration from Domain Randomization, where the basic idea is to randomize as much of a simulator as possible without fundamentally changing the task at hand. Generally, Domain Randomization assumes access to a pre-built simulator with configurable parameters but oftentimes this is not available. By training the World Model using dropout, the dream environment is capable of creating a nearly infinite number of different dream environments. Previous use cases of dropout either do not use dropout at inference time or averages the predictions generated by multiple sampled masks (Monte-Carlo Dropout). Dropout's Dream Land leverages each unique mask to create a diverse set of dream environments. Our experimental results show that Dropout's Dream Land is an effective technique to bridge the reality gap between dream environments and reality. Furthermore, we additionally perform an extensive set of ablation studies.