Augmenting Replay in World Models for Continual Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yang, Luke, Kuhlmann, Levin, Kowadlo, Gideon
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Yang, Luke
Kuhlmann, Levin
Kowadlo, Gideon
author_facet Yang, Luke
Kuhlmann, Levin
Kowadlo, Gideon
contents Continual RL requires an agent to learn new tasks without forgetting previous ones, while improving on both past and future tasks. The most common approaches use model-free algorithms and replay buffers can help to mitigate catastrophic forgetting, but often struggle with scalability due to large memory requirements. Biologically inspired replay suggests replay to a world model, aligning with model-based RL; as opposed to the common setting of replay in model-free algorithms. Model-based RL offers benefits for continual RL by leveraging knowledge of the environment, independent of policy. We introduce WMAR (World Models with Augmented Replay), a model-based RL algorithm with a memory-efficient distribution-matching replay buffer. WMAR extends the well known DreamerV3 algorithm, which employs a simple FIFO buffer and was not tested in continual RL. We evaluated WMAR and DreamerV3, with the same-size replay buffers. They were tested on two scenarios: tasks with shared structure using OpenAI Procgen and tasks without shared structure using the Atari benchmark. WMAR demonstrated favourable properties for continual RL considering metrics for forgetting as well as skill transfer on past and future tasks. Compared to DreamerV3, WMAR showed slight benefits in tasks with shared structure and substantially better forgetting characteristics on tasks without shared structure. Our results suggest that model-based RL with a memory-efficient replay buffer can be an effective approach to continual RL, justifying further research.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_16650
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Augmenting Replay in World Models for Continual Reinforcement Learning
Yang, Luke
Kuhlmann, Levin
Kowadlo, Gideon
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.6; I.5.0; I.5.1
Continual RL requires an agent to learn new tasks without forgetting previous ones, while improving on both past and future tasks. The most common approaches use model-free algorithms and replay buffers can help to mitigate catastrophic forgetting, but often struggle with scalability due to large memory requirements. Biologically inspired replay suggests replay to a world model, aligning with model-based RL; as opposed to the common setting of replay in model-free algorithms. Model-based RL offers benefits for continual RL by leveraging knowledge of the environment, independent of policy. We introduce WMAR (World Models with Augmented Replay), a model-based RL algorithm with a memory-efficient distribution-matching replay buffer. WMAR extends the well known DreamerV3 algorithm, which employs a simple FIFO buffer and was not tested in continual RL. We evaluated WMAR and DreamerV3, with the same-size replay buffers. They were tested on two scenarios: tasks with shared structure using OpenAI Procgen and tasks without shared structure using the Atari benchmark. WMAR demonstrated favourable properties for continual RL considering metrics for forgetting as well as skill transfer on past and future tasks. Compared to DreamerV3, WMAR showed slight benefits in tasks with shared structure and substantially better forgetting characteristics on tasks without shared structure. Our results suggest that model-based RL with a memory-efficient replay buffer can be an effective approach to continual RL, justifying further research.
title Augmenting Replay in World Models for Continual Reinforcement Learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.6; I.5.0; I.5.1
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.16650