For the IROS 2022 Safe Robot Learning Competition, check out branch beta-iros-competition

safe-control-gym

Physics-based CartPole and Quadrotor Gym environments (using PyBullet) with symbolic a priori dynamics (using CasADi) for learning-based control, and model-free and model-based reinforcement learning (RL).

These environments include (and evaluate) symbolic safety constraints and implement input, parameter, and dynamics disturbances to test the robustness and generalizability of control approaches. [PDF]

@article{brunke2021safe,
         title={Safe Learning in Robotics: From Learning-Based Control to Safe Reinforcement Learning}, 
         author={Lukas Brunke and Melissa Greeff and Adam W. Hall and Zhaocong Yuan and Siqi Zhou and Jacopo Panerati and Angela P. Schoellig},
         journal = {Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems},
         year={2021},
         url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.06266}}

Install on Ubuntu/macOS

Clone repo

git clone https://github.com/utiasDSL/safe-control-gym.git
cd safe-control-gym

Option A (recommended): using conda

Create and access a Python 3.8 environment using conda

conda create -n safe python=3.8.10
conda activate safe

Install the safe-control-gym repository

pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -e .

Option B: using venv and poetry

Create and access a Python 3.8 virtual environment using pyenv and venv

pyenv install 3.8.10
pyenv local 3.8.10
python3 -m venv safe
source safe/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install poetry
poetry install

Note:

You may need to separately install gmp, a dependency of pycddlib:

conda install -c anaconda gmp

or

sudo apt-get install libgmp-dev

Option C: using Colab

See this notebook where safe-control-gym is pre-installed

Architecture

Overview of safe-control-gym's API:

@misc{yuan2021safecontrolgym,
      title={safe-control-gym: a Unified Benchmark Suite for Safe Learning-based Control and Reinforcement Learning}, 
      author={Zhaocong Yuan and Adam W. Hall and Siqi Zhou and Lukas Brunke and Melissa Greeff and Jacopo Panerati and Angela P. Schoellig},
      year={2021},
      eprint={2109.06325},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.RO}}

Configuration

Performance

We compare the sample efficiency of safe-control-gym with the original [OpenAI Cartpole][1] and [PyBullet Gym's Inverted Pendulum][2], as well as [gym-pybullet-drones][3]. We choose the default physic simulation integration step of each project. We report performance results for open-loop, random action inputs. Note that the Bullet engine frequency reported for safe-control-gym is typically much finer grained for improved fidelity. safe-control-gym quadrotor environment is not as light-weight as [gym-pybullet-drones][3] but provides the same order of magnitude speed-up and several more safety features/symbolic models.

Environment	GUI	Control Freq.	PyBullet Freq.	Constraints & Disturbances^	Speed-Up^^
Gym cartpole	True	50Hz	N/A	No	1.16x
InvPenPyBulletEnv	False	60Hz	60Hz	No	158.29x
cartpole	True	50Hz	50Hz	No	0.85x
cartpole	False	50Hz	1000Hz	No	24.73x
cartpole	False	50Hz	1000Hz	Yes	22.39x
gym-pyb-drones	True	48Hz	240Hz	No	2.43x
gym-pyb-drones	False	50Hz	1000Hz	No	21.50x
quadrotor	True	60Hz	240Hz	No	0.74x
quadrotor	False	50Hz	1000Hz	No	9.28x
quadrotor	False	50Hz	1000Hz	Yes	7.62x

^ Whether the environment includes a default set of constraints and disturbances

^^ Speed-up = Elapsed Simulation Time / Elapsed Wall Clock Time; on a 2.30GHz Quad-Core i7-1068NG7 with 32GB 3733MHz LPDDR4X; no GPU

Getting Started

Familiarize with APIs and environments with the scripts in examples/

$ cd ./examples/                                                                    # Navigate to the examples folder
$ python3 tracking.py --overrides ./tracking.yaml                                   # PID trajectory tracking with the 2D quadcopter
$ python3 verbose_api.py --task cartpole --overrides verbose_api.yaml             #  Printout of the extended safe-control-gym APIs

Systems Variables and 2D Quadrotor Lemniscate Trajectory Tracking

Verbose API Example

List of Implemented Controllers

• LQR
• iLQR
• Linear MPC
• GP-MPC
• SAC
• PPO
• DDPG
• Safety Layer
• RARL
• RAP
• MPSC
• CBF

Re-create the Results in "Safe Learning in Robotics" [arXiv link]

To stay in touch, get involved or ask questions, please open an issue on GitHub or contact us via e-mail ({jacopo.panerati, zhaocong.yuan, adam.hall, siqi.zhou, lukas.brunke, melissa.greeff}@robotics.utias.utoronto.ca).

Figure 6—Robust GP-MPC [1]

$ cd ../experiments/annual_reviews/figure6/                        # Navigate to the experiment folder
$ chmod +x create_fig6.sh                                          # Make the script executable, if needed
$ ./create_fig6.sh                                                 # Run the script (ca. 2')

This will use the models in safe-control-gym/experiments/figure6/trained_gp_model/ to generate

To also re-train the GP models from scratch (ca. 30' on a laptop)

$ chmod +x create_trained_gp_model.sh                              # Make the script executable, if needed
$ ./create_trained_gp_model.sh                                     # Run the script (ca. 30')

Note: this will backup and overwrite safe-control-gym/experiments/figure6/trained_gp_model/

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Figure 7—Safe RL Exploration [2]

$ cd ../figure7/                                                   # Navigate to the experiment folder
$ chmod +x create_fig7.sh                                          # Make the script executable, if needed
$ ./create_fig7.sh                                                 # Run the script (ca. 5'')

This will use the data in safe-control-gym/experiments/figure7/safe_exp_results.zip/ to generate

To also re-train all the controllers/agents (warning: >24hrs on a laptop, if necessary, run each one of the loops in the Bash script—PPO, PPO with reward shaping, and the Safe Explorer—separately)

$ chmod +x create_safe_exp_results.sh                              # Make the script executable, if needed
$ ./create_safe_exp_results.sh                                     # Run the script (>24hrs)

Note: this script will (over)write the results in safe-control-gym/experiments/figure7/safe_exp_results/; if you do not run the re-training to completion, delete the partial results rm -r -f ./safe_exp_results/ before running ./create_fig7.sh again.

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Figure 8—Model Predictive Safety Certification [3]

(required) Obtain MOSEK's license (free for academia). Once you have received (via e-mail) and downloaded the license to your own ~/Downloads folder, install it by executing

$ mkdir ~/mosek                                                    # Create MOSEK license folder in your home '~'
$ mv ~/Downloads/mosek.lic ~/mosek/                                # Copy the downloaded MOSEK license to '~/mosek/'

Then run

$ cd ../figure8/                                                   # Navigate to the experiment folder
$ chmod +x create_fig8.sh                                          # Make the script executable, if needed
$ ./create_fig8.sh                                                 # Run the script (ca. 1')

This will use the unsafe (pre-trained) PPO controller/agent in folder safe-control-gym/experiments/figure8/unsafe_ppo_model/ to generate

To also re-train the unsafe PPO controller/agent (ca. 2' on a laptop)

$ chmod +x create_unsafe_ppo_model.sh                              # Make the script executable, if needed
$ ./create_unsafe_ppo_model.sh                                     # Run the script (ca. 2')

Note: this script will (over)write the model in safe-control-gym/experiments/figure8/unsafe_ppo_model/

References

• [1] Hewing L, Kabzan J, Zeilinger MN. 2020. Cautious model predictive control using Gaussian process regression. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology 28:2736–2743
• [2] Dalal G, Dvijotham K, Vecerik M, Hester T, Paduraru C, Tassa Y. 2018. Safe exploration in continuous action spaces. arXiv:1801.08757 [cs.AI]
• [3] Wabersich KP, Zeilinger MN. 2018. Linear Model Predictive Safety Certification for Learning-Based Control. In 2018 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 7130–7135

Related Open-source Projects

• gym-pybullet-drones: single and multi-quadrotor environments
• gym-marl-reconnaissance: multi-agent heterogeneous (UAV/UGV) environments
• stable-baselines3: PyTorch reinforcement learning algorithms
• bullet3: multi-physics simulation engine
• gym: OpenAI reinforcement learning toolkit
• safety-gym: environments for safe exploration in RL
• realworldrl_suite: real-world RL challenge framework
• casadi: symbolic framework for numeric optimization

TODOs (August 2022)

• Publish to PyPI
• Create resource list with papers, projects, blog posts (Cat's, etc.) using safe-control-gym

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University of Toronto's Dynamic Systems Lab / Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence