Matlab interface

Unfortunately, there is no stable implementation of protobuf for matlab. Instead, the python terminal outputs .mat files. These contains arrays of structs in the msg variable, with the fields in the structs matching the names of the protobuf fields.

Rather than reading these files directly, we expose the same interface as PILCO_:

rollout(start, ctrl, H, plant, cost, verb)

Shadows the PILCO method. Writes ctrl.mat with the necessary information to load in the terminal, and then brings up a file/open dialog to load the logs from the robot.

Parameters:

• start – Ignored
• ctrl – Contains the policy parameters. Currently assumed to be a linear controller or a random one. When passed a random one, a hand-crafted deterministic controller is used instead.
• H – The number of steps to run for. Assumed to be 50.
• plant – Information about the plant. Provides .dt, .in_frame, and .out_frame, which are useful for converting to and from protobuf field names
• cost – As in the normal rollout, produces costs from the states
• verb – Ignored