This work improves reinforcement learning with sparse rewards by following diverse past trajectories.
problem Challenges in reinforcement learning with sparse rewards and myopic behavior.
method Proposes a trajectory-conditioned policy to learn from a memory buffer of diverse past trajectories.
result Significantly outperforms existing methods on complex tasks with local optima.
We introduce a method for learning the dynamics of complex nonlinear systems based on deep generative models over temporal segments of states and actions. Unlike dynamics models that operate over individual discrete timesteps, we learn the distribution over future state trajectories conditioned on past state, past acti…
TAMO optimizes multiple objectives in-context using transformers.
problem Balancing competing objectives in expensive, black-box problems.
method Fully amortized, transformer-based policy for multi-objective optimization.
result Significant speedup in proposal time with improved Pareto quality.
This work trains a model to predict human driving directions from road scenes.
problem Defining implicit rules of human behavior for autonomous vehicles.
method Self-supervised learning of probabilistic network model.
result Model successfully generalizes to new road scenes.
New method identifies physical constants from video data alone.
problem Identifying physical constants from video data.
method Proves level-set slope-coverage condition ensures local affine mapping to true physical state, enabling exact parameter recovery.
result Underdamped systems identifiable from a single video clip, other regimes require three diverse trajectories.
Improved trajectory prediction for team sports using sparse outputs.
problem Challenging to train deep learning models for player trajectory prediction.
method Sparse trajectory prediction and constant acceleration interpolation.
result Interpolation improves performance for all tested models.
NDDV estimates data point value from a single stochastic trajectory.
problem Estimating marginal contributions of data points over stochastic training paths.
method Introduces Neural Dynamic Data Valuation (NDDV) using stochastic state and adjoint equations.
result NDDV provides a one-run, trajectory-conditioned estimator of data point value.
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.
Paper tackles efficient evaluation of natural stochastic policies in offline RL.
problem Efficiency issues in evaluating natural stochastic policies due to unknown evaluation policy.
method Derive efficiency bounds for tilting and modified treatment policies, propose nonparametric estimators.
result Proposed estimators attain efficiency bounds under lax conditions and enjoy partial double robustness.
New framework studies policy learning problems under data scarcity.
problem Learning improving policies when data is insufficient.
method Developed a mathematical framework for policy learning problems.
result Reduced policy learning problems to simpler ones in sample complexity.
New algorithms improve policy evaluation in reinforcement learning.
problem Off-policy stability and on-policy efficiency issues in policy evaluation.
method Introduced novel algorithms using oblique projection method.
result Demonstrated both off-policy stability and on-policy efficiency.
We study the problem of off-policy policy optimization in Markov decision processes, and develop a novel off-policy policy gradient method. Prior off-policy policy gradient approaches have generally ignored the mismatch between the distribution of states visited under the behavior policy used to collect data, and what …
Stabilizes policy optimization with off-policy data using divergence augmentation.
problem Premature convergence and instability in policy optimization with off-policy data.
method Incorporates Bregman divergence between behavior and current policies to ensure safe policy updates.
result Empirically shows better performance in data-scarce scenarios compared to other algorithms.
New method estimates state-action stationary distribution for better off-policy policy evaluation.
problem Accurately estimating state-action stationary distribution for off-policy policy evaluation.
method Estimated Mixture Policy (EMP) for state and state-action stationary distribution corrections.
result Empirical validation shows improved accuracy over state-of-the-art methods.
We consider the problem of off-policy evaluation in Markov decision processes. Off-policy evaluation is the task of evaluating the expected return of one policy with data generated by a different, behavior policy. Importance sampling is a technique for off-policy evaluation that re-weights off-policy returns to account…
New methods estimate policy value and gradients for deterministic policies from off-policy data.
problem Estimating policy value and gradients for deterministic policies from off-policy data.
method Proposed new doubly robust estimators based on kernelization approaches.
result Demonstrated a rate independent of horizon length for policy value and gradient estimation.
Study designs logging policies to minimize off-policy evaluation error.
problem Minimizing OPE error with logging policies for target policies.
method Characterizes reward-coverage tradeoff, proposes a unifying framework, derives optimal policies.
result Provides actionable guidance for firms choosing recommendation systems.
DSPI connects natural policy gradient to policy iteration, proving global convergence.
problem Optimizing policies in reinforcement learning.
method DSPI framework, combining smoothed policy iteration and natural policy gradient.
result DSPI achieves geometric convergence and optimal complexity for policy optimization.
POTEC tackles off-policy learning in large action spaces, improving effectiveness.
problem Existing OPL methods fail in large discrete action spaces due to bias or variance issues.
method Two-stage algorithm: cluster selection via policy-based approach, action selection via regression-based approach.
result POTEC provides substantial improvements in off-policy learning effectiveness, especially in large and structured action spaces.
Monotonic policy improvement and off-policy learning are two main desirable properties for reinforcement learning algorithms. In this paper, by lower bounding the performance difference of two policies, we show that the monotonic policy improvement is guaranteed from on- and off-policy mixture samples. An optimization …
Memory-efficient algorithm reduces variance in off-policy RL.
problem High variance in off-policy policy optimization.
method Memory-efficient, stochastically variance-reduced algorithm using off-policy samples.
result Empirically validated effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Protects proprietary policies from imitation learning by training adversarial policy ensembles.
problem Protecting policies from external observers cloning them.
method Introduces a reinforcement learning framework that trains an ensemble of near-optimal policies, making demonstrations useless for external observers.
result Demonstrates the existence of 'non-clonable' ensembles and provides a solution to the optimization problem.
In this work, we consider the problem of estimating a behaviour policy for use in Off-Policy Policy Evaluation (OPE) when the true behaviour policy is unknown. Via a series of empirical studies, we demonstrate how accurate OPE is strongly dependent on the calibration of estimated behaviour policy models: how precisely …
Extends OPE to evaluate policies using diverse logging data.
problem Evaluate policies using log data from different policies.
method Develops an OPE method for various logging policies.
result Method's predictions converge to true performance as sample size increases.
PS framework selects best policy from library for CSO problems.
problem Policy selection in CSO with heterogeneous performance across covariate space.
method PS framework constructs library of candidate policies and learns a meta-policy to select the best one.
result PS consistently outperforms best single policy in heterogeneous CSO problems.
P3O merges on-policy and off-policy updates without extra hyper-parameters.
problem Combining on-policy and off-policy RL algorithms to reduce sample complexity.
method Interleaves off-policy updates with on-policy updates using effective sample size.
result P3O reduces sample complexity of state-of-the-art algorithms.
Entropy regularization improves policy optimization in reinforcement learning.
problem Improving policy optimization in reinforcement learning.
method Entropy regularization is introduced to soften the greedy policy towards a more diverse softmax policy, leading to a continuously parameterized algorithm that interpolates between policy gradient and Q-learning.
result An intermediate algorithm can improve performance in reinforcement learning.
New method optimizes treatment policies to avoid winner's curse.
problem Winner's curse in treatment policy optimization.
method Inference-aware policy optimization.
result Optimizes for both estimated performance and downstream evaluation.
PBVFs generalize across policies using learned value functions.
problem RL algorithms forget information about old policies when updating value functions to track the learned policy.
method Introduce Parameter-Based Value Functions (PBVFs) that include policy parameters in their inputs, enabling them to generalize across different policies.
result PBVFs enable zero-shot learning of new policies that outperform any policy seen during training.
New method improves off-policy critic evaluation in reinforcement learning.
problem High variance and instability in off-policy policy evaluation.
method Doubly robust estimators applied to actor-critic algorithms.
result Doubly robust estimation significantly improves performance in continuous control tasks.
Estimates policy value from off-policy data in contextual bandits.
problem Estimating policy value from limited off-policy data in contextual bandits.
method Empirical likelihood techniques for optimization.
result Improves over previous methods in finite sample regimes.
Policy gradient aims to maximize expected return using gradient ascent.
problem Finding a policy that maximizes expected return in a given class of policies.
method Gradient ascent applied to a differentiable model of the policy, estimating the gradient of expected return.
result Policy gradient methods require on-policy data for gradient estimation, limiting sample efficiency.
Optimizes Thompson sampling policies using policy gradient methods.
problem Improving Thompson sampling in bandit problems.
method Applies policy gradient algorithms to optimize Thompson sampling policies.
result Direct policy search on Thompson sampling improves performance.
Study optimizes portfolio allocation policies using off-policy data and constraints.
problem Optimizing portfolio allocation policies under constraints using off-policy data.
method Solves a minimax objective with off-policy estimators and online learning to control constraint violations.
result Constructs near-optimal allocation policies for various regimes of operation and constraints.
Paper introduces a new policy optimization method using importance sampling.
problem Stable and low variance policy learning with small policy updates.
method Derives an alternative objective using importance sampling and introduces an approximation to balance bias and variance.
result The new algorithm improves on-policy policy optimization on continuous control benchmarks.
This paper extends off-policy reinforcement learning to the multi-agent case in which a set of networked agents communicating with their neighbors according to a time-varying graph collaboratively evaluates and improves a target policy while following a distinct behavior policy. To this end, the paper develops a multi-…
This paper introduces a new method to evaluate multiple policies simultaneously.
problem Estimating the value of many policies for a single set of states.
method Developed a scalable, differentiable fingerprinting mechanism to represent complex policies.
result The method can produce policies that outperform those that generated the training data, in zero-shot manner.
The paper interprets policy-gradient algorithms using continuation theory.
problem Optimizing nonconvex functions in reinforcement learning.
method Formulates policy optimization as optimization by continuation, interprets policy-gradient algorithms as implicitly optimizing deterministic policies.
result Exploration in policy-gradient algorithms is seen as computing a continuation of the return of the policy.
This work uses MMD to find diverse policies in reinforcement learning.
problem Finding multiple near-optimal policies for a task.
method Formalizes policy difference as trajectory distribution discrepancy, uses MMD for optimization.
result Derives gradient-based optimization for diverse policy identification.
New method reduces state distribution mismatch in off-policy RL.
problem State distribution mismatch in off-policy RL algorithms.
method Develops a novel constrained off-policy gradient objective to minimize state distribution shift.
result Minimizing state distribution shift improves performance in off-policy RL algorithms.
This work analyzes the gap between off-policy and on-policy policy gradient methods and provides conditions to reduce this gap.
problem The gap between off-policy and on-policy policy gradient methods and conditions to reduce it.
method Theoretical analysis and empirical evidence of conditions to reduce the on-off gap.
result Conditions to reduce the on-off gap between off-policy and on-policy policy gradient methods.
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.
Combines soft greediness with Modified Policy Iteration for more efficient deep reinforcement learning.
problem Improving sample efficiency in deep reinforcement learning.
method Combines soft greediness with Modified Policy Iteration (MPI) for off-policy learning.
result The proposed algorithm is more sample efficient than original PPO and competitive with SAC.
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.
New method learns policies without limiting to Gaussian distributions.
problem Limitations of Gaussian parameterization in policy learning.
method Advantage weighted quantile regression for implicit policy modeling.
result Comparable or superior performance on MuJoCo benchmarks.
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.
Framework improves policy generalizability under biased training data.
problem Learning policies that generalize to a target population from biased training data.
method Characterizes sample selection bias using a selection variable, optimizes minimax value over uncertainty set, derives efficient algorithm.
result Policies generalize to target population, outperform standard methods.