arXiv research

New findings on when to use action space exploration in reinforcement learning.

We study an exploration method for model-free RL that generalizes the counter-based exploration bonus methods and takes into account long term exploratory value of actions rather than a single step look-ahead. We propose a model-free RL method that modifies Delayed Q-learning and utilizes the long-term exploration bonu…

Black-box optimizers that explore in parameter space have often been shown to outperform more sophisticated action space exploration methods developed specifically for the reinforcement learning problem. We examine these black-box methods closely to identify situations in which they are worse than action space explorat…

A new multi-objective RL framework improves intrinsic exploration performance.

Achieving efficient and scalable exploration in complex domains poses a major challenge in reinforcement learning. While Bayesian and PAC-MDP approaches to the exploration problem offer strong formal guarantees, they are often impractical in higher dimensions due to their reliance on enumerating the state-action space.…

This paper proposes an exploration method for deep reinforcement learning based on parameter space noise. Recent studies have experimentally shown that parameter space noise results in better exploration than the commonly used action space noise. Previous methods devised a way to update the diagonal covariance matrix o…

A new exploration method for bandit and reinforcement learning.

We address the challenge of effective exploration while maintaining good performance in policy gradient methods. As a solution, we propose diverse exploration (DE) via conjugate policies. DE learns and deploys a set of conjugate policies which can be conveniently generated as a byproduct of conjugate gradient descent. …

Hyper addresses the hyperparameter tuning challenge in RL, improving exploration efficiency and robustness.

BeBold improves exploration in sparse-reward tasks by regulating visitation counts.

We introduce Parameterized Exploration (PE), a simple family of methods for model-based tuning of the exploration schedule in sequential decision problems. Unlike common heuristics for exploration, our method accounts for the time horizon of the decision problem as well as the agent's current state of knowledge of the …

EVILL uses randomised perturbations to improve exploration in bandit problems.

We present the Variational Adaptive Newton (VAN) method which is a black-box optimization method especially suitable for explorative-learning tasks such as active learning and reinforcement learning. Similar to Bayesian methods, VAN estimates a distribution that can be used for exploration, but requires computations th…

Exploration in multi-task reinforcement learning is critical in training agents to deduce the underlying MDP. Many of the existing exploration frameworks such as $E^3$, $R_{max}$, Thompson sampling assume a single stationary MDP and are not suitable for system identification in the multi-task setting. We present a nove…

A major challenge in reinforcement learning is exploration, when local dithering methods such as epsilon-greedy sampling are insufficient to solve a given task. Many recent methods have proposed to intrinsically motivate an agent to seek novel states, driving the agent to discover improved reward. However, while state-…

A new method boosts exploration in bandit algorithms, reducing regret.

Intrinsically motivated reinforcement learning aims to address the exploration challenge for sparse-reward tasks. However, the study of exploration methods in transition-dependent multi-agent settings is largely absent from the literature. We aim to take a step towards solving this problem. We present two exploration m…

Safe exploration method for RL under disturbance ensures safety with probabilistic guarantees.

This paper proposes a method to safely adjust exploration in RL to satisfy constraints.

Proposes a method to enhance exploration in RL using temporal difference uncertainties.

ASE safely explores unknown MDPs with unknown dynamics, improving sample efficiency.

Scalable and effective exploration remains a key challenge in reinforcement learning (RL). While there are methods with optimality guarantees in the setting of discrete state and action spaces, these methods cannot be applied in high-dimensional deep RL scenarios. As such, most contemporary RL relies on simple heuristi…

This paper provides an empirical evaluation of recently developed exploration algorithms within the Arcade Learning Environment (ALE). We study the use of different reward bonuses that incentives exploration in reinforcement learning. We do so by fixing the learning algorithm used and focusing only on the impact of the…

Recent years have witnessed a tremendous improvement of deep reinforcement learning. However, a challenging problem is that an agent may suffer from inefficient exploration, particularly for on-policy methods. Previous exploration methods either rely on complex structure to estimate the novelty of states, or incur sens…

Reinforcement learning with sparse rewards is still an open challenge. Classic methods rely on getting feedback via extrinsic rewards to train the agent, and in situations where this occurs very rarely the agent learns slowly or cannot learn at all. Similarly, if the agent receives also rewards that create suboptimal m…

HyperX uses reward bonuses to enable efficient exploration in meta-learning.

MADE improves exploration in RL by maximizing deviation from explored regions.

Reinforcement learning algorithms struggle when the reward signal is very sparse. In these cases, naive random exploration methods essentially rely on a random walk to stumble onto a rewarding state. Recent works utilize intrinsic motivation to guide the exploration via generative models, predictive forward models, or …

Simple mode exploration methods do not improve performance in neural networks.

New method uses birth-death process and exploration component to accelerate sampling from multimodal distributions.

A method for self-supervised representation learning in partially observable environments.

Exploration is critical to a reinforcement learning agent's performance in its given environment. Prior exploration methods are often based on using heuristic auxiliary predictions to guide policy behavior, lacking a mathematically-grounded objective with clear properties. In contrast, we recast exploration as a proble…

Improved RL algorithm stabilizes unknown linear systems with polynomial regret.

Proposes a method to accelerate safe sequential learning using offline data.

TOMA generates abstract graphs for RL, reducing memory and computation costs.

We introduce the community exploration problem that has many real-world applications such as online advertising. In the problem, an explorer allocates limited budget to explore communities so as to maximize the number of members he could meet. We provide a systematic study of the community exploration problem, from off…

In this article we explore an alternative approach to address deep exploration and we introduce the ISL algorithm, which is efficient at performing deep exploration. Similarly to maximum entropy RL, we derive the algorithm by augmenting the traditional RL objective with a novel regularization term. A distinctive featur…

New RL method explores environments without rewards, achieving efficient policy generation.

Balancing exploration and exploitation remains a key challenge in reinforcement learning (RL). State-of-the-art RL algorithms suffer from high sample complexity, particularly in the sparse reward case, where they can do no better than to explore in all directions until the first positive rewards are found. To mitigate …

Plan2Explore learns new tasks efficiently through self-supervised planning.

All reinforcement learning algorithms must handle the trade-off between exploration and exploitation. Many state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning methods use noise in the action selection, such as Gaussian noise in policy gradient methods or $ε$-greedy in Q-learning. While these methods are appealing due to their…

We propose a framework based on distributional reinforcement learning and recent attempts to combine Bayesian parameter updates with deep reinforcement learning. We show that our proposed framework conceptually unifies multiple previous methods in exploration. We also derive a practical algorithm that achieves efficien…

A new active learning method for Gaussian process models.

Proposes a method to avoid excessive exploration in reinforcement learning.

Exploration is an extremely challenging problem in reinforcement learning, especially in high dimensional state and action spaces and when only sparse rewards are available. Effective representations can indicate which components of the state are task relevant and thus reduce the dimensionality of the space to explore.…

Balancing exploration and exploitation is a fundamental part of reinforcement learning, yet most state-of-the-art algorithms use a naive exploration protocol like $ε$-greedy. This contributes to the problem of high sample complexity, as the algorithm wastes effort by repeatedly visiting parts of the state space that ha…

Sparse reward is one of the biggest challenges in reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper, we propose a novel method called Generative Exploration and Exploitation (GENE) to overcome sparse reward. GENE automatically generates start states to encourage the agent to explore the environment and to exploit received rew…

Develops a method to plan exploration that learns strong policies with fewer samples.