Related papers: Variational Inference for Policy Gradient
We propose a general purpose variational inference algorithm that forms a natural counterpart of gradient descent for optimization. Our method iteratively transports a set of particles to match the target distribution, by applying a form of…
Many Imitation and Reinforcement Learning approaches rely on the availability of expert-generated demonstrations for learning policies or value functions from data. Obtaining a reliable distribution of trajectories from motion planners is…
We propose a simple algorithm to train stochastic neural networks to draw samples from given target distributions for probabilistic inference. Our method is based on iteratively adjusting the neural network parameters so that the output…
Policy gradient methods have been successfully applied to many complex reinforcement learning problems. However, policy gradient methods suffer from high variance, slow convergence, and inefficient exploration. In this work, we introduce a…
Particle-based approximate Bayesian inference approaches such as Stein Variational Gradient Descent (SVGD) combine the flexibility and convergence guarantees of sampling methods with the computational benefits of variational inference. In…
Traditional policy gradient methods are fundamentally flawed. Natural gradients converge quicker and better, forming the foundation of contemporary Reinforcement Learning such as Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO) and Proximal Policy…
Modern policy gradient algorithms, such as TRPO and PPO, outperform vanilla policy gradient in many RL tasks. Questioning the common belief that enforcing approximate trust regions leads to steady policy improvement in practice, we show…
A crucial task in predictive maintenance is estimating the remaining useful life of physical systems. In the last decade, deep learning has improved considerably upon traditional model-based and statistical approaches in terms of predictive…
Bayesian inference problems require sampling or approximating high-dimensional probability distributions. The focus of this paper is on the recently introduced Stein variational gradient descent methodology, a class of algorithms that rely…
The policy gradient approach is a flexible and powerful reinforcement learning method particularly for problems with continuous actions such as robot control. A common challenge in this scenario is how to reduce the variance of policy…
Rare event simulation and rare event probability estimation are important tasks within the analysis of systems subject to uncertainty and randomness. Simultaneously, accurately estimating rare event probabilities is an inherently difficult…
We introduce a new variational inference (VI) framework, called energetic variational inference (EVI). It minimizes the VI objective function based on a prescribed energy-dissipation law. Using the EVI framework, we can derive many existing…
Policy gradient methods are powerful reinforcement learning algorithms and have been demonstrated to solve many complex tasks. However, these methods are also data-inefficient, afflicted with high variance gradient estimates, and frequently…
Recently, particle-based variational inference (ParVI) methods have gained interest because they can avoid arbitrary parametric assumptions that are common in variational inference. However, many ParVI approaches do not allow arbitrary…
We introduce a novel policy learning method that integrates analytical gradients from differentiable environments with the Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithm. To incorporate analytical gradients into the PPO framework, we…
Inference is the task of drawing conclusions about unobserved variables given observations of related variables. Applications range from identifying diseases from symptoms to classifying economic regimes from price movements. Unfortunately,…
Variational Bayesian inference is an important machine-learning tool that finds application from statistics to robotics. The goal is to find an approximate probability density function (PDF) from a chosen family that is in some sense…
Variational approaches to approximate Bayesian inference provide very efficient means of performing parameter estimation and model selection. Among these, so-called variational-Laplace or VL schemes rely on Gaussian approximations to…
Policy gradient based reinforcement learning algorithms coupled with neural networks have shown success in learning complex policies in the model free continuous action space control setting. However, explicitly parameterized policies are…
To accurately reproduce measurements from the real world, simulators need to have an adequate model of the physical system and require the parameters of the model be identified. We address the latter problem of estimating parameters through…