Maximum Entropy On-Policy Actor-Critic via Entropy Advantage Estimation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Choe, Jean Seong Bjorn, Kim, Jong-Kook
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Choe, Jean Seong Bjorn
Kim, Jong-Kook
author_facet Choe, Jean Seong Bjorn
Kim, Jong-Kook
contents Entropy Regularisation is a widely adopted technique that enhances policy optimisation performance and stability. A notable form of entropy regularisation is augmenting the objective with an entropy term, thereby simultaneously optimising the expected return and the entropy. This framework, known as maximum entropy reinforcement learning (MaxEnt RL), has shown theoretical and empirical successes. However, its practical application in straightforward on-policy actor-critic settings remains surprisingly underexplored. We hypothesise that this is due to the difficulty of managing the entropy reward in practice. This paper proposes a simple method of separating the entropy objective from the MaxEnt RL objective, which facilitates the implementation of MaxEnt RL in on-policy settings. Our empirical evaluations demonstrate that extending Proximal Policy Optimisation (PPO) and Trust Region Policy Optimisation (TRPO) within the MaxEnt framework improves policy optimisation performance in both MuJoCo and Procgen tasks. Additionally, our results highlight MaxEnt RL's capacity to enhance generalisation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_18143
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Maximum Entropy On-Policy Actor-Critic via Entropy Advantage Estimation
Choe, Jean Seong Bjorn
Kim, Jong-Kook
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Entropy Regularisation is a widely adopted technique that enhances policy optimisation performance and stability. A notable form of entropy regularisation is augmenting the objective with an entropy term, thereby simultaneously optimising the expected return and the entropy. This framework, known as maximum entropy reinforcement learning (MaxEnt RL), has shown theoretical and empirical successes. However, its practical application in straightforward on-policy actor-critic settings remains surprisingly underexplored. We hypothesise that this is due to the difficulty of managing the entropy reward in practice. This paper proposes a simple method of separating the entropy objective from the MaxEnt RL objective, which facilitates the implementation of MaxEnt RL in on-policy settings. Our empirical evaluations demonstrate that extending Proximal Policy Optimisation (PPO) and Trust Region Policy Optimisation (TRPO) within the MaxEnt framework improves policy optimisation performance in both MuJoCo and Procgen tasks. Additionally, our results highlight MaxEnt RL's capacity to enhance generalisation.
title Maximum Entropy On-Policy Actor-Critic via Entropy Advantage Estimation
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.18143