Variational Proximal Policy Optimization improves reinforcement learning from human feedback.
problem Policy mode collapse and brittle exploration loops in reinforcement learning.
method Particle-based variational inference framework with Mixture-of-Experts architecture.
result Significant improvements in complex reasoning benchmarks.
Deriving and applying Proximal Policy Optimization to GFlowNets for efficient training of discrete sampling policies
problem Training stochastic policies to sample from structured discrete probability distributions
method Deriving policy gradient algorithms for GFlowNets and applying Proximal Policy Optimization
result Improved convergence speed and data efficiency compared to standard GFlowNet training objectives
Proposes a Riemannian optimization for policy improvement in MDPs.
problem Optimizing policy functions in Markov decision processes (MDPs).
method Riemannian proximal optimization algorithm with Gaussian mixture model (GMM).
result Guaranteed convergence and efficacy demonstrated in preliminary experiments.
New algorithm stabilizes RL policy learning through divergence regularization.
problem Stabilize policy learning and improve performance in RL.
method Proximity term constraining discounted state-action visitation distributions to be close to each other.
result Proposed algorithm improves stability and final performance in RL tasks.
We make policy optimization algorithms batch size-invariant by decoupling proximal and behavior policies.
problem Some policy optimization algorithms do not have batch size-invariance, leading to inefficiencies.
method We decouple the proximal policy from the behavior policy to achieve batch size-invariance.
result Our approach makes policy optimization algorithms more efficient and allows them to use stale data more effectively.
Improves reinforcement learning stability and efficiency.
problem Combining stability and efficiency in reinforcement learning.
method Combines on-policy stability with off-policy sample reuse.
result Demonstrates improved performance in both theory and practice.
PPOS improves PPO by smoothing the surrogate objective function.
problem Performance instability and optimization inefficiency in PPO.
method Use of a functional clipping method instead of a flat clipping method.
result PPOS conducts more accurate updates and outperforms other PPO variants.
We propose a new sample-efficient methodology, called Supervised Policy Update (SPU), for deep reinforcement learning. Starting with data generated by the current policy, SPU formulates and solves a constrained optimization problem in the non-parameterized proximal policy space. Using supervised regression, it then con…
Improves RL algorithms with two techniques.
problem Enhance off-policy RL performance.
method Formulates RL as proximal point iteration; uses value functions for improved action value estimate.
result Significant performance improvement on RL benchmarks.
Revisits PPO design choices, exposing failure modes and proposing alternatives.
problem Failure modes of standard PPO in new environments.
method Revisits standard PPO design choices, exposes failure modes, and proposes alternative approaches.
result Alternative design choices prevent failure modes in new environments.
In sequence generation task, many works use policy gradient for model optimization to tackle the intractable backpropagation issue when maximizing the non-differentiable evaluation metrics or fooling the discriminator in adversarial learning. In this paper, we replace policy gradient with proximal policy optimization (…
Policy-gradient method controls multiple non-cohesive targets.
problem Controlling multiple non-cohesive targets in a decentralized manner.
method Proximal Policy Optimization for target selection and driving.
result Effective control of non-cohesive targets without prior dynamics knowledge.
Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is a highly popular model-free reinforcement learning (RL) approach. However, we observe that in a continuous action space, PPO can prematurely shrink the exploration variance, which leads to slow progress and may make the algorithm prone to getting stuck in local optima. Drawing insp…
Paper proposes a new method to optimize robot body structure and control policy.
problem Optimizing robot body structure and control policy in a coupled manner.
method Revisits co-design problem as a Stackelberg game, incorporating control adaptation dynamics.
result Stackelberg PPO outperforms standard PPO in stability and performance.
Proximal policy optimization(PPO) has been proposed as a first-order optimization method for reinforcement learning. We should notice that an exterior penalty method is used in it. Often, the minimizers of the exterior penalty functions approach feasibility only in the limits as the penalty parameter grows increasingly…
Proximal policy optimization and trust region policy optimization (PPO and TRPO) with actor and critic parametrized by neural networks achieve significant empirical success in deep reinforcement learning. However, due to nonconvexity, the global convergence of PPO and TRPO remains less understood, which separates theor…
Study shows code-level optimizations significantly impact deep RL algorithms.
problem Understanding the impact of implementation details on deep RL algorithms.
method Case study on PPO and TRPO, investigating the effects of code-level optimizations.
result Code-level optimizations are crucial for performance in deep RL algorithms.
Proximal policy optimization (PPO) is one of the most successful deep reinforcement-learning methods, achieving state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of challenging tasks. However, its optimization behavior is still far from being fully understood. In this paper, we show that PPO could neither strictly restr…
As the most successful variant and improvement for Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO), proximal policy optimization (PPO) has been widely applied across various domains with several advantages: efficient data utilization, easy implementation, and good parallelism. In this paper, a first-order gradient reinforcemen…
Very recently proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithms have been proposed as first-order optimization methods for effective reinforcement learning. While PPO is inspired by the same learning theory that justifies trust region policy optimization (TRPO), PPO substantially simplifies algorithm design and improves da…
PPO's gradients are heavy-tailed, affecting learning; a robust estimator improves performance.
problem Heavy-tailedness of PPO gradients causing learning issues.
method Characterized heavy-tailed gradients, identified likelihood ratios and advantages as sources, proposed GMOM as a robust estimator.
result GMOM improves PPO performance without clipping tricks.
This research introduces an autonomous robot navigation method using reinforcement learning.
problem Improving robot navigation in complex environments.
method Deep Q Network (DQN) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) models for path planning and decision-making.
result The models enhance robot navigation ability and adaptive learning in unknown environments.
Study shows tractable generalization in RL is impossible but possible with Strong Proximity.
problem RL agents struggle to generalize to new environments.
method Introduced Weak and Strong Proximity conditions to capture similarity between environments.
result Proved Strong Proximity is sufficient for efficient generalization.
This paper uses deep reinforcement learning to optimize stock portfolios considering transaction costs and risks.
problem Optimizing stock portfolios with transaction costs and risks.
method Formulated stock portfolio optimization as a reinforcement learning problem, applied DDPG, GDPG, and PPO algorithms, and used Wavelet Transform.
result DDPG and GDPG algorithms outperformed PPO in continuous action space.
RPO uses past and future state-action info for better policy optimization.
problem Sample inefficiency in on-policy reinforcement learning methods.
method Reflective Policy Optimization (RPO) integrates past and future state-action info for policy improvement.
result RPO improves policy performance and contracts the solution space, leading to faster convergence.
Paper uses DRL to optimize portfolios, balancing risk and return.
problem Optimizing portfolios under market uncertainty and risk constraints.
method Integrates Sharpe ratio-based reward with risk control mechanisms, uses PPO for adaptive asset allocation.
result DRL agent stabilizes volatility but sacrifices risk-adjusted returns.
Proximal policy optimization (PPO) is one of the most popular deep reinforcement learning (RL) methods, achieving state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of challenging tasks. However, as a model-free RL method, the success of PPO relies heavily on the effectiveness of its exploratory policy search. In this pa…
Develops ODRPO to improve RL algorithms with better performance and stability.
problem RL algorithms converge to sub-optimal solutions due to limited policy representation.
method Integrates DRO approach to solve trust region constrained optimization problem without parameterizing policies.
result Achieves globally optimal policy update and higher sample efficiency.
Adapts GRPO for off-policy RL, improving reward.
problem Improving training stability and efficiency in RL.
method Adapts GRPO to off-policy setting, uses clipped surrogate objectives.
result Off-policy GRPO outperforms on-policy GRPO in empirical tests.
AI algorithms outperform traditional trading methods in stock markets.
problem Traditional trading methods struggle with risk management and edge over classical approaches.
method Used Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms (DDQN and PPO) to compare with Buy and Hold benchmark.
result DRL algorithms provide a substantial edge over classical approaches in terms of risk-adjusted returns.
A drone catches another agile drone using competitive reinforcement learning.
problem Intercepting an agile drone with another agile drone.
method Formulated as a Competitive Reinforcement Learning problem, trained with PPO, using a high-fidelity simulation environment.
result Trained policies outperform common heuristic baselines in catch rate, time to catch, and crash rate.
TOPPO improves PPO for MTRL by balancing critic gradients, outperforming SAC.
problem Critic-side gradient ill-conditioning in PPO for MTRL.
method Critic Balancing modules to improve gradient conditioning and balance task updates.
result TOPPO achieves stronger mean and tail-task performance than SAC-family and ARS-family baselines.
Photonic quantum reinforcement learning for control problems.
problem Solving continuous control problems with noisy quantum computers.
method Proximal policy optimization for photonic variational quantum agents.
result Photonic policy learning achieves comparable performance to classical neural networks.
Develops minibatch stochastic proximal gradient for large-scale learning models.
problem Finding optimal predictors with complex regularizers in large-scale learning models.
method Minibatch variants of stochastic proximal gradient algorithm for composite objective functions.
result Minibatch size N after O(Nε1) iterations achieves ε−suboptimality in expected quadratic distance. The paper tackles counterfactual learning for stochastic policies with continuous actions.
problem Learning stochastic policies with continuous actions from logged data.
method Introduces a joint kernel embedding of contexts and actions to model continuous actions, and uses proximal point algorithms and smooth estimators for optimization.
result Demonstrates the benefits of using proximal point algorithms and smooth estimators for counterfactual learning.
Recent policy optimization approaches (Schulman et al., 2015a; 2017) have achieved substantial empirical successes by constructing new proxy optimization objectives. These proxy objectives allow stable and low variance policy learning, but require small policy updates to ensure that the proxy objective remains an accur…
This paper compares eight DRL algorithms for dynamic hedging.
problem Optimal dynamic hedging strategies using Deep Reinforcement Learning.
method Eight DRL algorithms (MCPG, PPO, DQL, DDPG) compared using a GJR-GARCH(1,1) simulated dataset.
result MCPG and PPO outperform the Black-Scholes delta hedge baseline.
While policy-based reinforcement learning (RL) achieves tremendous successes in practice, it is significantly less understood in theory, especially compared with value-based RL. In particular, it remains elusive how to design a provably efficient policy optimization algorithm that incorporates exploration. To bridge su…
MAP-Elites generates diverse trading strategies for improved execution performance.
problem Optimizing trading execution schedules in volatile market conditions.
method Quality-diversity algorithm (MAP-Elites) generating a portfolio of specialized strategies.
result Diverse strategies achieve 8-10% performance improvements, validating quality-diversity methods.
Machine learning improves Buchberger's algorithm for polynomial systems.
problem Optimizing S-pair selection in Buchberger's algorithm for polynomial systems.
method Reinforcement learning agents trained with PPO to select S-pairs.
result Trained model outperforms existing heuristics in polynomial additions.
This work extends ME-RL using diffusion models to sample optimal policies.
problem Sampling from the optimal policy trajectory distribution in ME-RL.
method Introducing Diffusion-Augmented Markov Decision Processes (DA-MDPs) to minimize reverse KL divergence.
result DA-MDPs enable seamless integration into various ME-RL methods and outperform baselines.
WAPPO optimizes feature distributions for better visual transfer in RL.
problem Improving visual transfer in reinforcement learning.
method WAPPO uses Wasserstein Confusion to minimize feature distribution distance.
result WAPPO outperforms previous methods in visual transfer across different environments.
We propose a novel actor-critic, model-free reinforcement learning algorithm which employs a Bayesian method of parameter space exploration to solve environments. A Gaussian process is used to learn the expected return of a policy given the policy's parameters. The system is trained by updating the parameters using gra…
PRL improves off-policy evaluation in partially observed MDPs.
problem Confounding and bias in offline reinforcement learning with unobserved state factors.
method Extends proximal causal inference to POMDPs, identifying and estimating target policy value.
result Semiparametrically efficient estimators for PRL in partially observed MDPs.
In this paper we propose a hybrid architecture of actor-critic algorithms for reinforcement learning in parameterized action space, which consists of multiple parallel sub-actor networks to decompose the structured action space into simpler action spaces along with a critic network to guide the training of all sub-acto…
Recent successful deep reinforcement learning algorithms, such as Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO) or Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), are fundamentally variations of conservative policy iteration (CPI). These algorithms iterate policy evaluation followed by a softened policy improvement step. As so, they are…
In the NIPS 2017 Learning to Run challenge, participants were tasked with building a controller for a musculoskeletal model to make it run as fast as possible through an obstacle course. Top participants were invited to describe their algorithms. In this work, we present eight solutions that used deep reinforcement lea…
This paper proposes a definition of system health in the context of multiple agents optimizing a joint reward function. We use this definition as a credit assignment term in a policy gradient algorithm to distinguish the contributions of individual agents to the global reward. The health-informed credit assignment is t…