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Current model-based reinforcement learning approaches use the model simply as a learned black-box simulator to augment the data for policy optimization or value function learning. In this paper, we show how to make more effective use of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-19 Ignasi Clavera , Violet Fu , Pieter Abbeel

The actor-critic (AC) framework has achieved strong empirical success in off-policy reinforcement learning but suffers from the "moving target" problem, where the evaluated policy changes continually. Functional critics, or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Qinxun Bai , Yuxuan Han , Wei Xu , Zhengyuan Zhou

Actor-critic methods, a type of model-free reinforcement learning (RL), have achieved state-of-the-art performances in many real-world domains in continuous control. Despite their success, the wide-scale deployment of these models is still…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-14 Srinjoy Roy , Saptam Bakshi , Tamal Maharaj

This paper presents an off-policy Gaussian Predictive Control (GPC) framework aimed at solving optimal control problems with a smaller computational footprint, thereby facilitating real-time applicability while ensuring critical safety…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-19 Shiva Kumar Tekumatla , Varun Gampa , Siavash Farzan

In this paper, we propose the first fully push-forward-based distributional reinforcement learning algorithm, named PACER, which consists of a distributional critic, a stochastic actor and a sample-based encourager. Specifically, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-10 Wensong Bai , Chao Zhang , Yichao Fu , Peilin Zhao , Hui Qian , Bin Dai

Compared to on-policy counterparts, off-policy model-free deep reinforcement learning can improve data efficiency by repeatedly using the previously gathered data. However, off-policy learning becomes challenging when the discrepancy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-27 Baturay Saglam , Dogan C. Cicek , Furkan B. Mutlu , Suleyman S. Kozat

In this paper, we propose a distributed off-policy actor critic method to solve multi-agent reinforcement learning problems. Specifically, we assume that all agents keep local estimates of the global optimal policy parameter and update…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-25 Yan Zhang , Michael M. Zavlanos

Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) is one of the state-of-the-art off-policy reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms that is within the maximum entropy based RL framework. SAC is demonstrated to perform very well in a list of continous control tasks…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-22 Zhenyang Shi , Surya P. N. Singh

Improving the sample efficiency of reinforcement learning algorithms requires effective exploration. Following the principle of $\textit{optimism in the face of uncertainty}$ (OFU), we train a separate exploration policy to maximize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-23 Jiachen Li , Shuo Cheng , Zhenyu Liao , Huayan Wang , William Yang Wang , Qinxun Bai

Off-policy actor-critic algorithms have shown strong potential in deep reinforcement learning for continuous control tasks. Their success primarily comes from leveraging pessimistic state-action value function updates, which reduce function…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-21 Bahareh Tasdighi , Nicklas Werge , Yi-Shan Wu , Melih Kandemir

The oscillating performance of off-policy learning and persisting errors in the actor-critic (AC) setting call for algorithms that can conservatively learn to suit the stability-critical applications better. In this paper, we propose a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-06 Lingwei Zhu , Toshinori Kitamura , Takamitsu Matsubara

Off-Policy Actor-Critic (Off-PAC) methods have proven successful in a variety of continuous control tasks. Normally, the critic's action-value function is updated using temporal-difference, and the critic in turn provides a loss for the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-03 Wei Zhou , Yiying Li , Yongxin Yang , Huaimin Wang , Timothy M. Hospedales

Deep off-policy actor-critic algorithms have emerged as the leading framework for reinforcement learning in continuous control domains. However, most of these algorithms suffer from poor sample efficiency, especially in environments with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-25 Zahra Shahrooei , Ali Baheri

We investigate the combination of actor-critic reinforcement learning algorithms with uniform large-scale experience replay and propose solutions for two challenges: (a) efficient actor-critic learning with experience replay (b) stability…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-19 Simon Schmitt , Matteo Hessel , Karen Simonyan

Despite definite success in deep reinforcement learning problems, actor-critic algorithms are still confronted with sample inefficiency in complex environments, particularly in tasks where efficient exploration is a bottleneck. These…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-09 Yannis Flet-Berliac , Johan Ferret , Olivier Pietquin , Philippe Preux , Matthieu Geist

We study the problem of off-policy critic evaluation in several variants of value-based off-policy actor-critic algorithms. Off-policy actor-critic algorithms require an off-policy critic evaluation step, to estimate the value of the new…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-12-12 Riashat Islam , Raihan Seraj , Samin Yeasar Arnob , Doina Precup

Reinforcement learning algorithms rely on exploration to discover new behaviors, which is typically achieved by following a stochastic policy. In continuous control tasks, policies with a Gaussian distribution have been widely adopted.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-28 Dmytro Korenkevych , A. Rupam Mahmood , Gautham Vasan , James Bergstra

Model-free deep reinforcement learning (RL) has been successfully applied to challenging continuous control domains. However, poor sample efficiency prevents these methods from being widely used in real-world domains. This paper introduces…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-27 Sicen Li , Qinyun Tang , Yiming Pang , Xinmeng Ma , Gang Wang

Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) is an off-policy actor-critic deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithm based on maximum entropy reinforcement learning. By combining off-policy updates with an actor-critic formulation, SAC achieves…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-11 Che Wang , Keith Ross

Actor-critic (AC) algorithms are a class of model-free deep reinforcement learning algorithms, which have proven their efficacy in diverse domains, especially in solving continuous control problems. Improvement of exploration (action…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-04 Chayan Banerjee , Zhiyong Chen , Nasimul Noman