Exterior Penalty Policy Optimization with Penalty Metric Network under Constraints

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Gao, Shiqing, Ding, Jiaxin, Fu, Luoyi, Wang, Xinbing, Zhou, Chenghu
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Gao, Shiqing
Ding, Jiaxin
Fu, Luoyi
Wang, Xinbing
Zhou, Chenghu
author_facet Gao, Shiqing
Ding, Jiaxin
Fu, Luoyi
Wang, Xinbing
Zhou, Chenghu
contents In Constrained Reinforcement Learning (CRL), agents explore the environment to learn the optimal policy while satisfying constraints. The penalty function method has recently been studied as an effective approach for handling constraints, which imposes constraints penalties on the objective to transform the constrained problem into an unconstrained one. However, it is challenging to choose appropriate penalties that balance policy performance and constraint satisfaction efficiently. In this paper, we propose a theoretically guaranteed penalty function method, Exterior Penalty Policy Optimization (EPO), with adaptive penalties generated by a Penalty Metric Network (PMN). PMN responds appropriately to varying degrees of constraint violations, enabling efficient constraint satisfaction and safe exploration. We theoretically prove that EPO consistently improves constraint satisfaction with a convergence guarantee. We propose a new surrogate function and provide worst-case constraint violation and approximation error. In practice, we propose an effective smooth penalty function, which can be easily implemented with a first-order optimizer. Extensive experiments are conducted, showing that EPO outperforms the baselines in terms of policy performance and constraint satisfaction with a stable training process, particularly on complex tasks.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_15537
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exterior Penalty Policy Optimization with Penalty Metric Network under Constraints
Gao, Shiqing
Ding, Jiaxin
Fu, Luoyi
Wang, Xinbing
Zhou, Chenghu
Machine Learning
Robotics
In Constrained Reinforcement Learning (CRL), agents explore the environment to learn the optimal policy while satisfying constraints. The penalty function method has recently been studied as an effective approach for handling constraints, which imposes constraints penalties on the objective to transform the constrained problem into an unconstrained one. However, it is challenging to choose appropriate penalties that balance policy performance and constraint satisfaction efficiently. In this paper, we propose a theoretically guaranteed penalty function method, Exterior Penalty Policy Optimization (EPO), with adaptive penalties generated by a Penalty Metric Network (PMN). PMN responds appropriately to varying degrees of constraint violations, enabling efficient constraint satisfaction and safe exploration. We theoretically prove that EPO consistently improves constraint satisfaction with a convergence guarantee. We propose a new surrogate function and provide worst-case constraint violation and approximation error. In practice, we propose an effective smooth penalty function, which can be easily implemented with a first-order optimizer. Extensive experiments are conducted, showing that EPO outperforms the baselines in terms of policy performance and constraint satisfaction with a stable training process, particularly on complex tasks.
title Exterior Penalty Policy Optimization with Penalty Metric Network under Constraints
topic Machine Learning
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.15537