# PLANS: Robust Program Learning from Neurally Inferred Specifications

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.03312 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03312/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 5 Jun 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Program Generation from Diverse Video Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00178/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent years have seen the rise of statistical program learning based on neural models as an alternative to traditional rule-based systems for programming by example. Rule-based approaches offer correctness guarantees in an unsupervised way as they inherently capture logical rules, while neural models are more realistically scalable to raw, high-dimensional input, and provide resistance to noisy I/O specifications. We introduce PLANS (Program LeArning from Neurally inferred Specifications), a hybrid model for program synthesis from visual observations that gets the best of both worlds, relying on (i) a neural architecture trained to extract abstract, high-level information from each raw individual input (ii) a rule-based system using the extracted information as I/O specifications to synthesize a program capturing the different observations. In order to address the key challenge of making PLANS resistant to noise in the network's output, we introduce a filtering heuristic for I/O specifications based on selective classification techniques. We obtain state-of-the-art performance at program synthesis from diverse demonstration videos in the Karel and ViZDoom environments, while requiring no ground-truth program for training. We make our implementation available at github.com/rdang-nhu/PLANS.