  Curiosity as a means to explore during reinforcement learning problems has
recently become very popular. However, very little progress has been made in
utilizing curiosity for learning control. In this work, we propose a
model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) framework that combines Bayesian
modeling of the system dynamics with curious iLQR, an iterative LQR approach
that considers model uncertainty. During trajectory optimization the curious
iLQR attempts to minimize both the task-dependent cost and the uncertainty in
the dynamics model. We demonstrate the approach on reaching tasks with 7-DoF
manipulators in simulation and on a real robot. Our experiments show that MBRL
with curious iLQR reaches desired end-effector targets more reliably and with
less system rollouts when learning a new task from scratch, and that the
learned model generalizes better to new reaching tasks.

Robotics;Artificial Intelligence;Machine Learning