4_train_policy_with_script.md

This tutorial will explain the training script, how to use it, and particularly the use of Hydra to configure everything needed for the training run.

The training script

LeRobot offers a training script at lerobot/scripts/train.py. At a high level it does the following:

• Loads a Hydra configuration file for the following steps (more on Hydra in a moment).
• Makes a simulation environment.
• Makes a dataset corresponding to that simulation environment.
• Makes a policy.
• Runs a standard training loop with forward pass, backward pass, optimization step, and occasional logging, evaluation (of the policy on the environment), and checkpointing.

Basics of how we use Hydra

Explaining the ins and outs of Hydra is beyond the scope of this document, but here we'll share the main points you need to know.

First, lerobot/configs has a directory structure like this:

.
├── default.yaml
├── env
│   ├── aloha.yaml
│   ├── pusht.yaml
│   └── xarm.yaml
└── policy
    ├── act.yaml
    ├── diffusion.yaml
    └── tdmpc.yaml

For brevity, in the rest of this document we'll drop the leading lerobot/configs path. So default.yaml really refers to lerobot/configs/default.yaml.

When you run the training script with

python lerobot/scripts/train.py

Hydra is set up to read default.yaml (via the @hydra.main decorator). If you take a look at the @hydra.main's arguments you will see config_path="../configs", config_name="default". At the top of default.yaml, is a defaults section which looks likes this:

defaults:
  - _self_
  - env: pusht
  - policy: diffusion

This logic tells Hydra to incorporate configuration parameters from env/pusht.yaml and policy/diffusion.yaml. Note: Be aware of the order as any configuration parameters with the same name will be overidden. Thus, default.yaml is overridden by env/pusht.yaml which is overidden by policy/diffusion.yaml.

Then, default.yaml also contains common configuration parameters such as device: cuda or use_amp: false (for enabling fp16 training). Some other parameters are set to ??? which indicates that they are expected to be set in additional yaml files. For instance, training.offline_steps: ??? in default.yaml is set to 200000 in diffusion.yaml.

Thanks to this defaults section in default.yaml, if you want to train Diffusion Policy with PushT, you really only need to run:

python lerobot/scripts/train.py

However, you can be more explicit and launch the exact same Diffusion Policy training on PushT with:

python lerobot/scripts/train.py policy=diffusion env=pusht

This way of overriding defaults via the CLI is especially useful when you want to change the policy and/or environment. For instance, you can train ACT on the default Aloha environment with:

python lerobot/scripts/train.py policy=act env=aloha

There are two things to note here:

• Config overrides are passed as param_name=param_value.
• Here we have overridden the defaults section. policy=act tells Hydra to use policy/act.yaml, and env=aloha tells Hydra to use env/aloha.yaml.

As an aside: we've set up all of our configurations so that they reproduce state-of-the-art results from papers in the literature.

Overriding configuration parameters in the CLI

Now let's say that we want to train on a different task in the Aloha environment. If you look in env/aloha.yaml you will see something like:

# lerobot/configs/env/aloha.yaml
env:
  task: AlohaInsertion-v0

And if you look in policy/act.yaml you will see something like:

# lerobot/configs/policy/act.yaml
dataset_repo_id: lerobot/aloha_sim_insertion_human

But our Aloha environment actually supports a cube transfer task as well. To train for this task, you could manually modify the two yaml configuration files respectively.

First, we'd need to switch to using the cube transfer task for the ALOHA environment.

# lerobot/configs/env/aloha.yaml
env:
-  task: AlohaInsertion-v0
+  task: AlohaTransferCube-v0

Then, we'd also need to switch to using the cube transfer dataset.

# lerobot/configs/policy/act.yaml
-dataset_repo_id: lerobot/aloha_sim_insertion_human
+dataset_repo_id: lerobot/aloha_sim_transfer_cube_human

Then, you'd be able to run:

python lerobot/scripts/train.py policy=act env=aloha

and you'd be training and evaluating on the cube transfer task.

An alternative approach to editing the yaml configuration files, would be to override the defaults via the command line:

python lerobot/scripts/train.py \
    policy=act \
    dataset_repo_id=lerobot/aloha_sim_transfer_cube_human \
    env=aloha \
    env.task=AlohaTransferCube-v0

There's something new here. Notice the . delimiter used to traverse the configuration hierarchy. But be aware that the defaults section is an exception. As you saw above, we didn't need to write defaults.policy=act in the CLI. policy=act was enough.

Putting all that knowledge together, here's the command that was used to train https://huggingface.co/lerobot/act_aloha_sim_transfer_cube_human.

python lerobot/scripts/train.py \
    hydra.run.dir=outputs/train/act_aloha_sim_transfer_cube_human \
    device=cuda
    env=aloha \
    env.task=AlohaTransferCube-v0 \
    dataset_repo_id=lerobot/aloha_sim_transfer_cube_human \
    policy=act \
    training.eval_freq=10000 \
    training.log_freq=250 \
    training.offline_steps=100000 \
    training.save_model=true \
    training.save_freq=25000 \
    eval.n_episodes=50 \
    eval.batch_size=50 \
    wandb.enable=false \

There's one new thing here: hydra.run.dir=outputs/train/act_aloha_sim_transfer_cube_human, which specifies where to save the training output.

Using a configuration file not in lerobot/configs

Above we discusses the our training script is set up such that Hydra looks for default.yaml in lerobot/configs. But, if you have a configuration file elsewhere in your filesystem you may use:

python lerobot/scripts/train.py --config-dir PARENT/PATH --config-name FILE_NAME_WITHOUT_EXTENSION

Note: here we use regular syntax for providing CLI arguments to a Python script, not Hydra's param_name=param_value syntax.

As a concrete example, this becomes particularly handy when you have a folder with training outputs, and would like to re-run the training. For example, say you previously ran the training script with one of the earlier commands and have outputs/train/my_experiment/checkpoints/pretrained_model/config.yaml. This config.yaml file will have the full set of configuration parameters within it. To run the training with the same configuration again, do:

python lerobot/scripts/train.py --config-dir outputs/train/my_experiment/checkpoints/last/pretrained_model --config-name config

Note that you may still use the regular syntax for config parameter overrides (eg: by adding training.offline_steps=200000).

---

So far we've seen how to train Diffusion Policy for PushT and ACT for ALOHA. Now, what if we want to train ACT for PushT? Well, there are aspects of the ACT configuration that are specific to the ALOHA environments, and these happen to be incompatible with PushT. Therefore, trying to run the following will almost certainly raise an exception of sorts (eg: feature dimension mismatch):

python lerobot/scripts/train.py policy=act env=pusht dataset_repo_id=lerobot/pusht

Please, head on over to our advanced tutorial on adapting policy configuration to various environments to learn more.

Or in the meantime, happy coding! 🤗