English

The Divergence of Reinforcement Learning Algorithms with Value-Iteration and Function Approximation

Machine Learning 2012-07-31 v2

Abstract

This paper gives specific divergence examples of value-iteration for several major Reinforcement Learning and Adaptive Dynamic Programming algorithms, when using a function approximator for the value function. These divergence examples differ from previous divergence examples in the literature, in that they are applicable for a greedy policy, i.e. in a "value iteration" scenario. Perhaps surprisingly, with a greedy policy, it is also possible to get divergence for the algorithms TD(1) and Sarsa(1). In addition to these divergences, we also achieve divergence for the Adaptive Dynamic Programming algorithms HDP, DHP and GDHP.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1107.4606,
  title  = {The Divergence of Reinforcement Learning Algorithms with Value-Iteration and Function Approximation},
  author = {Michael Fairbank and Eduardo Alonso},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1107.4606},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

8 pages, 4 figures. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, June 2012, Brisbane (IEEE IJCNN 2012), pp. 3070--3077

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:40:47.642Z