M3PO improves model-based meta-RL with theoretical guarantees.
problem Improving sample efficiency in multi-task RL with theoretical guarantees.
method Extending Janner et al. (2019) theorems, proposing M3PO with performance guarantees.
result M3PO outperforms existing methods in continuous-control benchmarks.
Paper tackles offline meta-reinforcement learning with a new algorithm.
problem Performing reinforcement learning on limited data from a new task.
method Meta-Actor Critic with Advantage Weighting (MACAW) algorithm.
result Achieves notable gains over prior methods on offline meta-RL benchmarks.
New method improves meta-reinforcement learning efficiency.
problem Sample inefficiency in meta-reinforcement learning.
method Hindsight Foresight Relabeling (HFR) method.
result HFR improves performance on various meta-reinforcement learning tasks.
CCM improves context for Meta-RL by contrastive learning.
problem Improving context for Meta-RL to enable task generalization.
method CCM framework using contrastive learning for context encoding and information-gain-based trajectory collection.
result CCM outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms in benchmarks and sparse-reward environments.
New meta-RL method avoids exploration-exploitation trade-off.
problem Learning to explore and exploit simultaneously in meta-RL.
method Developed new objectives for exploration and exploitation.
result DREAM outperforms existing methods on complex tasks.
Gradient-based meta-RL fails with incorrect task distributions, leading to instability and poor performance.
problem Gradient-based meta-RL's sensitivity to task distributions causes instability and poor performance.
method Proposes meta Active Domain Randomization (meta-ADR) to learn task distributions for gradient-based meta-RL.
result Meta-ADR improves stability and generalization of MAML on simulated locomotion and navigation tasks.
Credit assignment in Meta-reinforcement learning (Meta-RL) is still poorly understood. Existing methods either neglect credit assignment to pre-adaptation behavior or implement it naively. This leads to poor sample-efficiency during meta-training as well as ineffective task identification strategies. This paper provide…
This paper introduces Meta-Q-Learning (MQL), a new off-policy algorithm for meta-Reinforcement Learning (meta-RL). MQL builds upon three simple ideas. First, we show that Q-learning is competitive with state-of-the-art meta-RL algorithms if given access to a context variable that is a representation of the past traject…
Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms have demonstrated promising results on complex tasks, yet often require impractical numbers of samples since they learn from scratch. Meta-RL aims to address this challenge by leveraging experience from previous tasks so as to more quickly solve new tasks. However, in practice, th…
FLAP adapts policies quickly to new tasks using shared linear representations.
problem Adapting policies to new tasks efficiently and effectively.
method FLAP uses a shared linear representation and a separate adapter network for quick adaptation.
result FLAP achieves up to 8X faster adaptation and significantly better performance on out-of-distribution tasks.
Empirical study shows consistent meta-RL algorithms adapt to OOD tasks.
problem Theoretical consistency of meta-RL algorithms and its practical implications.
method Empirical investigation of representative meta-RL algorithms, focusing on consistency and adaptation to out-of-distribution tasks.
result Theoretical consistent algorithms can adapt to OOD tasks, while inconsistent ones cannot, but can still fail for poor exploration.
Deep reinforcement learning algorithms require large amounts of experience to learn an individual task. While in principle meta-reinforcement learning (meta-RL) algorithms enable agents to learn new skills from small amounts of experience, several major challenges preclude their practicality. Current methods rely heavi…
ContraBAR uses contrastive learning to learn Bayes-optimal policies in RL.
problem Learning optimal policies for unknown tasks sampled from a known distribution.
method Proposes ContraBAR, a meta RL algorithm using contrastive predictive coding (CPC) for belief inference.
result ContraBAR achieves comparable performance to state-of-the-art methods and is computationally efficient.
New symmetries improve meta-reinforcement learning's generalization.
problem Black-box meta reinforcement learning struggles with generalization.
method Introduce symmetries to a black-box meta RL system.
result Incorporating symmetries improves generalization to new environments.
Novel meta-RL strategy improves efficiency in learning novel tasks.
problem Efficiency in learning novel tasks using deep RL.
method Decomposes meta-RL into task-exploration, task-inference, and task-fulfillment; uses deep networks and a task encoder.
result Improves sample efficiency and mitigates meta-overfitting.
Most meta reinforcement learning (meta-RL) methods learn to adapt to new tasks by directly optimizing the parameters of policies over primitive action space. Such algorithms work well in tasks with relatively slight difference. However, when the task distribution becomes wider, it would be quite inefficient to directly…
FOCAL tackles offline meta-reinforcement learning with efficient task inference and behavior regularization.
problem Efficiently adapt RL algorithms to unseen tasks without interactions, addressing bootstrapping errors and robust task inference.
method FOCAL combines behavior regularization, a deterministic context encoder, and a negative-power distance metric for efficient task inference.
result FOCAL outperforms prior algorithms on meta-RL benchmarks, demonstrating computational efficiency.
AdMRL improves meta-reinforcement learning by minimizing worst-case sub-optimality gap.
problem Meta-reinforcement learning's sensitivity to task distribution shift.
method Model-based adversarial approach with minimax objective and alternating optimization.
result Efficacy in worst-case performance, generalization to out-of-distribution tasks, and sample efficiency.
HTMRL uses HTM for RL, adapting faster to changing environments.
problem Adapting to non-stationary environments in RL.
method Strictly HTM-based RL algorithm.
result HTMRL adapts faster to changing environments in a 10-armed bandit.
Despite significant progress, deep reinforcement learning (RL) suffers from data-inefficiency and limited generalization. Recent efforts apply meta-learning to learn a meta-learner from a set of RL tasks such that a novel but related task could be solved quickly. Though specific in some ways, different tasks in meta-RL…
Regularization improves generalization in Bayesian RL, shown through algorithmic stability.
problem Ensuring good generalization in Bayesian reinforcement learning.
method Algorithmic stability, using regularization and fast convergence rates for mirror descent.
result Regularization makes the optimal policy stable, improving generalization.
Biological evolution has distilled the experiences of many learners into the general learning algorithms of humans. Our novel meta reinforcement learning algorithm MetaGenRL is inspired by this process. MetaGenRL distills the experiences of many complex agents to meta-learn a low-complexity neural objective function th…
Trading off exploration and exploitation in an unknown environment is key to maximising expected return during learning. A Bayes-optimal policy, which does so optimally, conditions its actions not only on the environment state but on the agent's uncertainty about the environment. Computing a Bayes-optimal policy is how…
We propose and address a novel few-shot RL problem, where a task is characterized by a subtask graph which describes a set of subtasks and their dependencies that are unknown to the agent. The agent needs to quickly adapt to the task over few episodes during adaptation phase to maximize the return in the test phase. In…
Develops HMRL for sparse reward RL problems, improving meta policy efficiency and transferability.
problem Difficulty in learning meta policies for sparse reward RL problems.
method Hyper-Meta RL framework with cross-environment meta state embedding and shaped meta reward.
result Improves meta policy generalization and efficiency for sparse reward RL problems.
Humans achieve efficient learning by relying on prior knowledge about the structure of naturally occurring tasks. There is considerable interest in designing reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms with similar properties. This includes proposals to learn the learning algorithm itself, an idea also known as meta learnin…
Proves efficient learning of hierarchical structure in meta-reinforcement learning.
problem Lack of provable guarantees for learning hierarchical structures in reinforcement learning.
method Analyzed HRL in meta-RL setting with tabular transition dynamics, providing diversity conditions and regret bounds.
result Sample-efficient recovery of natural hierarchical structure with provable guarantees.
CausalCOMRL improves RL task representations by integrating causal relationships, enhancing generalizability.
problem Spurious correlations in context-based offline meta-reinforcement learning.
method CausalCOMRL integrates causal representation learning to uncover and incorporate causal relationships among task components.
result CausalCOMRL achieves better performance on meta-reinforcement learning benchmarks.
In recent years deep reinforcement learning (RL) systems have attained superhuman performance in a number of challenging task domains. However, a major limitation of such applications is their demand for massive amounts of training data. A critical present objective is thus to develop deep RL methods that can adapt rap…
Meta-learning curiosity algorithms improves exploration across various tasks.
problem Generating curious behavior in reinforcement learning.
method Meta-learning approach to adapt reward signals dynamically.
result Two novel curiosity algorithms outperform human-designed ones.
LC-SAC tackles non-stationary dynamics in reinforcement learning.
problem Degradation of deep RL methods in non-stationary environments.
method LC-SAC uses latent context encoders and contrastive loss for dynamic information capture.
result LC-SAC outperforms SAC on environments with drastic dynamics changes.
This work extends HiP-MDPs to robust state abstractions for multi-task and meta-reinforcement learning.
problem Limited observability of state in HiP-MDPs for real-world scenarios with rich observation spaces.
method Inspired by Block MDPs, the work extends HiP-MDPs to enable robust state abstractions for multi-task and meta-reinforcement learning.
result Transfer and generalization bounds based on task and state similarity, and sample complexity bounds that depend on the aggregate number of samples across tasks.
GeneraLight improves traffic signal control models' generalization ability.
problem Overfitting and lack of generalization ability in RL TSC models.
method GeneraLight uses a meta-RL framework with a traffic flow generator based on GANs.
result GeneraLight significantly boosts generalization performance across different traffic flows.
Maximizes Rényi entropy for efficient exploration in reward-free RL.
problem Challenges of exploration in reward-free reinforcement learning.
method Maximizes Rényi entropy over state-action space in exploration phase; uses batch RL for planning phase.
result Effective and sample-efficient exploration leading to superior policies.
DIVA generates diverse tasks for complex simulators, enabling adaptive agent training.
problem Lack of diverse training data for complex, open-ended simulators.
method Evolutionary approach using domain randomization and procedural generation.
result Successfully trains adaptive agent behavior in complex simulators.
New meta-reinforcement learning method improves performance in finite-horizon MDPs.
problem Improving meta-reinforcement learning in finite-horizon MDPs with shared optimal action-value functions.
method Proposes MTSRL and MTSRL+ algorithms with learned priors and covariance, coupled with prior-alignment technique for meta-regret guarantees.
result Achieves meta-regret guarantees with learned priors and covariance, outperforming prior-independent RL and bandit-only meta-baselines.