Related papers: Improving Deep Policy Gradients with Value Functio…
In this paper we propose a novel gradient algorithm to learn a policy from an expert's observed behavior assuming that the expert behaves optimally with respect to some unknown reward function of a Markovian Decision Problem. The…
Despite advancements in deep reinforcement learning algorithms, developing an effective exploration strategy is still an open problem. Most existing exploration strategies either are based on simple heuristics, or require the model of the…
In this paper we study a new approach in optimization that aims to search a large domain D where a given function takes large, small or specific values via an iterative optimization algorithm based on the gradient. We show that the…
The control variates (CV) method is widely used in policy gradient estimation to reduce the variance of the gradient estimators in practice. A control variate is applied by subtracting a baseline function from the state-action value…
Reinforcement learning (RL) enables agents to take decision based on a reward function. However, in the process of learning, the choice of values for learning algorithm parameters can significantly impact the overall learning process. In…
Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) has proven to be remarkably effective in optimizing deep neural networks that employ ever-larger numbers of parameters. Yet, improving the efficiency of large-scale optimization remains a vital and highly…
Deep neural networks are a promising approach towards multi-task learning because of their capability to leverage knowledge across domains and learn general purpose representations. Nevertheless, they can fail to live up to these promises…
Policy gradient (PG) gives rise to a rich class of reinforcement learning (RL) methods. Recently, there has been an emerging trend to accelerate the existing PG methods such as REINFORCE by the \emph{variance reduction} techniques. However,…
We study the computational complexity of (deterministic or randomized) algorithms based on point samples for approximating or integrating functions that can be well approximated by neural networks. Such algorithms (most prominently…
The aim of this paper is to study the reward based policy exploration problem in a supervised learning approach and enable robots to form complex movement trajectories in challenging reward settings and search spaces. For this, the…
Policy gradient methods are a vital ingredient behind the success of modern reinforcement learning. Modern policy gradient methods, although successful, introduce a residual error in gradient estimation. In this work, we argue that this…
Policy gradient methods are among the most effective methods in challenging reinforcement learning problems with large state and/or action spaces. However, little is known about even their most basic theoretical convergence properties,…
Feature selection in reinforcement learning (RL), i.e. choosing basis functions such that useful approximations of the unkown value function can be obtained, is one of the main challenges in scaling RL to real-world applications. Here we…
Uncertainty estimation for Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a critical component in control tasks where agents must balance safe exploration and efficient learning. While deep neural networks have enabled breakthroughs in RL, they often lack…
Although deep reinforcement learning methods can learn effective policies for challenging problems such as Atari games and robotics tasks, algorithms are complex, and training times are often long. This study investigates how Evolution…
Gradient-based optimization methods are commonly used to identify local optima in high-dimensional spaces. When derivatives cannot be evaluated directly, stochastic estimators can provide approximate gradients. However, these estimators'…
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…
In recent years, the increasing size of deep learning models and their growing demand for computational resources have drawn significant attention to the practice of pruning neural networks, while aiming to preserve their accuracy. In…
We prove that, for finite-arm bandits with linear function approximation, the global convergence of policy gradient (PG) methods depends on inter-related properties between the policy update and the representation. textcolor{blue}{First},…
In value-based reinforcement learning (RL), unlike in supervised learning, the agent faces not a single, stationary, approximation problem, but a sequence of value prediction problems. Each time the policy improves, the nature of the…