We propose to improve trust region policy search with normalizing flows policy. We illustrate that when the trust region is constructed by KL divergence constraints, normalizing flows policy generates samples far from the 'center' of the previous policy iterate, which potentially enables better exploration and helps av…
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48 results for “trust region policy optimization”
We propose a trust region method for policy optimization that employs Quasi-Newton approximation for the Hessian, called Quasi-Newton Trust Region Policy Optimization QNTRPO. Gradient descent is the de facto algorithm for reinforcement learning tasks with continuous controls. The algorithm has achieved state-of-the-art…
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.
Mirror descent method improved RL algorithms.
problem Improving RL algorithms for better performance.
method Mirror descent method applied to RL, solving trust-region problems.
result MDPO outperforms or matches other RL algorithms in continuous control tasks.
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…
New algorithm improves deep learning stability with limited data.
problem Stability and robustness in reinforcement learning with scarce data.
method Uncertainty-aware trust region approach to policy optimization.
result Stable policy updates adapt to uncertainty levels during learning.
Trust-region methods have yielded state-of-the-art results in policy search. A common approach is to use KL-divergence to bound the region of trust resulting in a natural gradient policy update. We show that the natural gradient and trust region optimization are equivalent if we use the natural parameterization of a st…
MF-TRPO optimizes MFGs with finite sample guarantees.
problem Computing approximate Nash equilibria in MFGs.
method Extends TRPO to MFGs, providing convergence guarantees.
result Theoretical guarantees on MF-TRPO's convergence.
Adaptive Trust Region Policy Optimization: Global Convergence and Faster Rates for Regularized MDPscs.LG
Trust region policy optimization (TRPO) is a popular and empirically successful policy search algorithm in Reinforcement Learning (RL) in which a surrogate problem, that restricts consecutive policies to be 'close' to one another, is iteratively solved. Nevertheless, TRPO has been considered a heuristic algorithm inspi…
Recent advances in policy gradient methods and deep learning have demonstrated their applicability for complex reinforcement learning problems. However, the variance of the performance gradient estimates obtained from the simulation is often excessive, leading to poor sample efficiency. In this paper, we apply the stoc…
Success Conditioning as Policy Improvement: The Optimization Problem Solved by Imitating Successcs.AI
Success conditioning optimizes policies by imitating successful trajectories, solving a trust-region optimization problem.
problem Improving policies through random actions that lead to desired outcomes.
method Success conditioning, which involves collecting and updating policies based on successful trajectories.
result Success conditioning solves a trust-region optimization problem, maximizing policy improvement with a divergence constraint.
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…
Value Enhancement of Reinforcement Learning via Efficient and Robust Trust Region Optimizationstat.ML
Paper enhances RL policies using trust region optimization for offline data.
problem Limited data in offline RL settings.
method Trust region optimization for value enhancement.
result Enhanced policy values with faster convergence.
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…
Safe Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Vehicles through Parallel Constrained Policy Optimizationcs.LG
Safe RL for autonomous vehicles using PCPO with trust regions and parallel learners.
problem Unexplainable behaviours and lack of safety guarantees in RL for real vehicles.
method PCPO framework with trust regions and parallel learners.
result Safe learning confirmed for autonomous vehicles with fast convergence.
VaR-CPO optimizes VaR-constrained RL problems with conservative policy updates.
problem Optimizing VaR-constrained reinforcement learning problems.
method Combines Cantelli's inequality and trust-region framework for efficient and conservative optimization.
result Achieves zero constraint violations during training in feasible environments.
TRM improves long-horizon LLM RL by masking divergent sequences.
problem Long-horizon reinforcement learning with LLMs suffers from off-policy mismatch and approximation errors.
method Derives and applies trust region bounds to control divergence, proposing Trust Region Masking.
result First non-vacuous monotonic improvement guarantees for long-horizon LLM-RL.
TRM improves long-horizon reinforcement learning for LLMs by masking divergent sequences.
problem Long-horizon reinforcement learning for LLMs suffers from off-policy mismatch and approximation errors.
method Derives and applies trust region bounds to control divergence, proposing Trust Region Masking.
result First non-vacuous monotonic improvement guarantees for long-horizon LLM-RL.
Building upon the recent success of deep reinforcement learning methods, we investigate the possibility of on-policy reinforcement learning improvement by reusing the data from several consecutive policies. On-policy methods bring many benefits, such as ability to evaluate each resulting policy. However, they usually d…
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.
Reinforcement Learning(RL) with sparse rewards is a major challenge. We propose \emph{Hindsight Trust Region Policy Optimization}(HTRPO), a new RL algorithm that extends the highly successful TRPO algorithm with \emph{hindsight} to tackle the challenge of sparse rewards. Hindsight refers to the algorithm's ability to l…
In data-limited settings, stochastic policies can outperform deterministic ones in bandit problems.
problem Making reliable decisions with limited data in bandit problems.
method Designing TRUST, an algorithm that uses localization laws and relative pessimism.
result TRUST achieves comparable sample complexity to LCB on minimax problems but is significantly lower on few-sample problems.
Canary optimizes VaR-constrained RL problems with a conservative bound using Cantelli's inequality.
problem Optimizing reinforcement learning policies under VaR constraints in dense cost regimes.
method Employing Cantelli's inequality to create a conservative and smooth bound on VaR constraints based on moments of cost returns. Extending trust-region framework for worst-case bounds on policy improvement and constraint violation.
result Canary reliably satisfies VaR constraints with fewest violations and earliest permanent satisfaction, while maintaining reward competitiveness.
New RL algorithm optimizes policies with bandit feedback, matching previous bounds.
problem Optimizing policies with unknown transitions and bandit feedback.
method Optimistic Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO) algorithm.
result Sub-linear regret bounds for both stochastic and adversarial rewards.
Two multifidelity trust-region methods use low-fidelity models for efficient optimization.
problem Efficiently solving complex optimization problems with limited data.
method Sketched Trust-Region (STR) and SVD Trust-Region (SVDTR) methods using low-fidelity models.
result Potential gain in efficiency demonstrated through numerical examples.
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 …
Bayesian optimization tackles constrained high-dimensional problems with penalties and trust regions.
problem Constrained optimization in high-dimensional black-box settings with expensive evaluations and complex feasibility regions.
method Penalty formulation, surrogate model, trust region strategy, Expected Improvement acquisition function.
result The proposed Trust Region method identifies high-quality feasible solutions with fewer evaluations and maintains stable performance.
TRSVR combines SVRG with trust-region for faster optimization.
problem Unconstrained nonconvex optimization problems.
method Adaptive stochastic trust-region method with variance reduction.
result Converges to first-order stationary points with SVRG.
Local PBO methods improve preferential BO in high-dimensional problems.
problem Efficiently optimizing preferential BO in high-dimensional settings.
method Adapting high-dimensional BO techniques to preferential feedback.
result Local PBO methods reduce cumulative regret compared to global baselines.
AdaScale-TuRBO improves high-dimensional Bayesian optimization by dynamically scaling the GP lengthscale.
problem Inappropriate lengthscale design in TuRBO's local GP model causes suboptimal performance in high dimensions.
method Proposes AdaScale-TuRBO, which scales the GP lengthscale with both problem dimension and trust region size.
result AdaScale-TuRBO robustly outperforms standard TuRBO and other methods on synthetic and real-world tasks.
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.
Policy evaluation is a key process in reinforcement learning. It assesses a given policy using estimation of the corresponding value function. When using a parameterized function to approximate the value, it is common to optimize the set of parameters by minimizing the sum of squared Bellman Temporal Differences errors…
Proposes a new algorithm for solving optimization problems with stochastic objectives and equality constraints.
problem Optimization problems with stochastic objectives and deterministic equality constraints.
method Trust-region stochastic sequential quadratic programming (TR-StoSQP) with adaptive relaxation techniques.
result Established a global almost sure convergence guarantee for TR-StoSQP.
TREGO improves EGO for global optimization of high-dimensional problems.
problem Efficient Global Optimization struggles with high dimensions and lacks theoretical guarantees.
method TREGO alternates between EGO steps and local steps within a trust region.
result TREGO outperforms EGO and other methods in black-box optimization problems.
Entropy-regularized NPG methods converge linearly in discounted MDPs.
problem Theoretical limitations of NPG methods in reinforcement learning.
method Entropy regularization in conjunction with NPG methods for discounted MDPs.
result Entropy-regularized NPG methods converge linearly in discounted MDPs.
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…
Proposes CoPO, a new policy optimization method for competitive games.
problem Designing efficient optimization methods for competitive Markov decision processes.
method Competitive policy optimization (CoPO) approach that exploits game-theoretic nature of competitive games.
result Stable optimization, convergence to sophisticated strategies, and higher scores compared to baseline methods.
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…
TROLL improves RL for LLMs by replacing clipping with a trust region projection.
problem Clipping in RL for LLMs causes instability and suboptimal performance.
method TROLL uses a discrete differentiable trust region projection to replace clipping, balancing computational cost and effectiveness.
result TROLL consistently outperforms PPO-like clipping in training speed, stability, and final success rates.
We explore Deep Reinforcement Learning in a parameterized action space. Specifically, we investigate how to achieve sample-efficient end-to-end training in these tasks. We propose a new compact architecture for the tasks where the parameter policy is conditioned on the output of the discrete action policy. We also prop…
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…
Trust-aware MAB improves learning performance by accounting for human deviation.
problem Learning performance suffers when humans deviate from recommended policies due to lack of trust.
method Integrates a dynamic trust model into MAB framework, establishing minimax regret and proposing a two-stage trust-aware procedure.
result Proves near-optimal statistical guarantees for trust-aware MAB algorithms.
FR-LUX optimizes portfolio management by learning cost-aware policies robust to market conditions.
problem Transaction costs and regime shifts cause failure in live trading portfolios.
method Integrates three ingredients: microstructure-consistent execution model, trade-space trust region, and explicit regime conditioning.
result Achieves top average Sharpe ratio, maintains flat cost-performance slope, and superior risk-return efficiency.
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.
The paper analyzes and improves a deep learning optimization technique using matrix gradient orthogonality.
problem Improving deep learning training through more effective optimization methods.
method Develops a stochastic non-Euclidean trust-region gradient method for deep learning optimization.
result Proves state-of-the-art convergence results for the proposed algorithm in various scenarios.
Many recent successful (deep) reinforcement learning algorithms make use of regularization, generally based on entropy or Kullback-Leibler divergence. We propose a general theory of regularized Markov Decision Processes that generalizes these approaches in two directions: we consider a larger class of regularizers, and…
New approach generates optimal disturbances for controller verification.
problem Optimizing disturbances for controller verification with blackbox access.
method Online learning approach that adaptively generates disturbances based on controller inputs.
result New algorithm (MOTR) outperforms existing methods in simulated examples.
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…