The ThreeDWorld Transport Challenge: A Visually Guided Task-and-Motion Planning Benchmark for Physically Realistic Embodied AI

TitleThe ThreeDWorld Transport Challenge: A Visually Guided Task-and-Motion Planning Benchmark for Physically Realistic Embodied AI
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2021
AuthorsGan, C, Zhou, S, Schwartz, J, Alter, S, Bhandwaldar, A, Gutfreund, D, Yamins, DLK, DiCarlo, JJ, McDermott, J, Torralba, A
JournalarXiv
Date Published03/25/2021
Type of Articlepreprint
Abstract

We introduce a visually-guided and physics-driven taskand-motion planning benchmark, which we call the ThreeDWorld Transport Challenge. In this challenge, an embodied agent equipped with two 9-DOF articulated arms is spawned randomly in a simulated physical home environment. The agent is required to find a small set of objects scattered around the house, pick them up, and transport them to a desired final location. We also position containers around the house that can be used as tools to assist with transporting objects efficiently. To complete the task, an embodied agent must plan a sequence of actions to change the state of a large number of objects in the face of realistic physical constraints. We build this benchmark challenge using the ThreeDWorld simulation: a virtual 3D environment where all objects respond to physics, and where can be controlled using a fully physics-driven navigation and interaction API. We evaluate several existing agents on this benchmark. Experimental results suggest that: 1) a pure RL model struggles on this challenge; 2) hierarchical planningbased agents can transport some objects but still far from solving this task. We anticipate that this benchmark will empower researchers to develop more intelligent physicsdriven robots for the physical world. 

URLhttps://arxiv.org/abs/2103.14025
DOI
Refereed DesignationNon-Refereed

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