Intrinsic Language-Guided Exploration for Complex Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation Tasks

Abstract: Current reinforcement learning algorithms struggle in sparse and complex environments, most notably in long-horizon manipulation tasks entailing a plethora of different sequences. In this work, we propose the Intrinsically Guided Exploration from LLMs (IGE-LLMs) framework. By leveraging LLMs as an assistive intrinsic reward, IGE-LLMs guides the exploratory process in reinforcement learning to address intricate long-horizon with sparse rewards robotic manipulation tasks. We evaluate our framework and related intrinsic learning methods in an environment challenged with exploration, and a complex robotic manipulation task challenged by both exploration and long-horizons. Results show IGE-LLMs (i) exhibit notably higher performance over related intrinsic methods and the direct use of LLMs in decision-making, (ii) can be combined and complement existing learning methods highlighting its modularity, (iii) are fairly insensitive to different intrinsic scaling parameters, and (iv) maintain robustness against increased levels of uncertainty and horizons.