Bug fix: missing attention mask in VAE encoder in ACT policy (#279)

Co-authored-by: Alexander Soare <alexander.soare159@gmail.com>

lerobot/common/policies/act/modeling_act.py

@@ -314,9 +314,23 @@ class ACT(nn.Module):
             # Note: detach() shouldn't be necessary but leaving it the same as the original code just in case.
             pos_embed = self.vae_encoder_pos_enc.clone().detach()  # (1, S+2, D)
 
+            # Prepare key padding mask for the transformer encoder. We have 1 or 2 extra tokens at the start of the
+            # sequence depending whether we use the input states or not (cls and robot state)
+            # False means not a padding token.
+            cls_joint_is_pad = torch.full(
+                (batch_size, 2 if self.use_input_state else 1),
+                False,
+                device=batch["observation.state"].device,
+            )
+            key_padding_mask = torch.cat(
+                [cls_joint_is_pad, batch["action_is_pad"]], axis=1
+            )  # (bs, seq+1 or 2)
+
             # Forward pass through VAE encoder to get the latent PDF parameters.
             cls_token_out = self.vae_encoder(
-                vae_encoder_input.permute(1, 0, 2), pos_embed=pos_embed.permute(1, 0, 2)
+                vae_encoder_input.permute(1, 0, 2),
+                pos_embed=pos_embed.permute(1, 0, 2),
+                key_padding_mask=key_padding_mask,
             )[0]  # select the class token, with shape (B, D)
             latent_pdf_params = self.vae_encoder_latent_output_proj(cls_token_out)
             mu = latent_pdf_params[:, : self.config.latent_dim]
@@ -402,9 +416,11 @@ class ACTEncoder(nn.Module):
         self.layers = nn.ModuleList([ACTEncoderLayer(config) for _ in range(config.n_encoder_layers)])
         self.norm = nn.LayerNorm(config.dim_model) if config.pre_norm else nn.Identity()
 
-    def forward(self, x: Tensor, pos_embed: Tensor | None = None) -> Tensor:
+    def forward(
+        self, x: Tensor, pos_embed: Tensor | None = None, key_padding_mask: Tensor | None = None
+    ) -> Tensor:
         for layer in self.layers:
-            x = layer(x, pos_embed=pos_embed)
+            x = layer(x, pos_embed=pos_embed, key_padding_mask=key_padding_mask)
         x = self.norm(x)
         return x
 
@@ -427,12 +443,13 @@ class ACTEncoderLayer(nn.Module):
         self.activation = get_activation_fn(config.feedforward_activation)
         self.pre_norm = config.pre_norm
 
-    def forward(self, x, pos_embed: Tensor | None = None) -> Tensor:
+    def forward(self, x, pos_embed: Tensor | None = None, key_padding_mask: Tensor | None = None) -> Tensor:
         skip = x
         if self.pre_norm:
             x = self.norm1(x)
         q = k = x if pos_embed is None else x + pos_embed
-        x = self.self_attn(q, k, value=x)[0]  # select just the output, not the attention weights
+        x = self.self_attn(q, k, value=x, key_padding_mask=key_padding_mask)
+        x = x[0]  # note: [0] to select just the output, not the attention weights
         x = skip + self.dropout1(x)
         if self.pre_norm:
             skip = x