Normality-Guided Distributional Reinforcement Learning for Continuous Control

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Byun, Ju-Seung, Perrault, Andrew
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2022
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author Byun, Ju-Seung
Perrault, Andrew
author_facet Byun, Ju-Seung
Perrault, Andrew
contents Learning a predictive model of the mean return, or value function, plays a critical role in many reinforcement learning algorithms. Distributional reinforcement learning (DRL) has been shown to improve performance by modeling the value distribution, not just the mean. We study the value distribution in several continuous control tasks and find that the learned value distribution is empirically quite close to normal. We design a method that exploits this property, employing variances predicted from a variance network, along with returns, to analytically compute target quantile bars representing a normal for our distributional value function. In addition, we propose a policy update strategy based on the correctness as measured by structural characteristics of the value distribution not present in the standard value function. The approach we outline is compatible with many DRL structures. We use two representative on-policy algorithms, PPO and TRPO, as testbeds. Our method yields statistically significant improvements in 10 out of 16 continuous task settings, while utilizing a reduced number of weights and achieving faster training time compared to an ensemble-based method for quantifying value distribution uncertainty.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2208_13125
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Normality-Guided Distributional Reinforcement Learning for Continuous Control
Byun, Ju-Seung
Perrault, Andrew
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Learning a predictive model of the mean return, or value function, plays a critical role in many reinforcement learning algorithms. Distributional reinforcement learning (DRL) has been shown to improve performance by modeling the value distribution, not just the mean. We study the value distribution in several continuous control tasks and find that the learned value distribution is empirically quite close to normal. We design a method that exploits this property, employing variances predicted from a variance network, along with returns, to analytically compute target quantile bars representing a normal for our distributional value function. In addition, we propose a policy update strategy based on the correctness as measured by structural characteristics of the value distribution not present in the standard value function. The approach we outline is compatible with many DRL structures. We use two representative on-policy algorithms, PPO and TRPO, as testbeds. Our method yields statistically significant improvements in 10 out of 16 continuous task settings, while utilizing a reduced number of weights and achieving faster training time compared to an ensemble-based method for quantifying value distribution uncertainty.
title Normality-Guided Distributional Reinforcement Learning for Continuous Control
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.13125