The Cross-environment Hyperparameter Setting Benchmark for Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Patterson, Andrew, Neumann, Samuel, Kumaraswamy, Raksha, White, Martha, White, Adam
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Patterson, Andrew
Neumann, Samuel
Kumaraswamy, Raksha
White, Martha
White, Adam
author_facet Patterson, Andrew
Neumann, Samuel
Kumaraswamy, Raksha
White, Martha
White, Adam
contents This paper introduces a new empirical methodology, the Cross-environment Hyperparameter Setting Benchmark, that compares RL algorithms across environments using a single hyperparameter setting, encouraging algorithmic development which is insensitive to hyperparameters. We demonstrate that this benchmark is robust to statistical noise and obtains qualitatively similar results across repeated applications, even when using few samples. This robustness makes the benchmark computationally cheap to apply, allowing statistically sound insights at low cost. We demonstrate two example instantiations of the CHS, on a set of six small control environments (SC-CHS) and on the entire DM Control suite of 28 environments (DMC-CHS). Finally, to illustrate the applicability of the CHS to modern RL algorithms on challenging environments, we conduct a novel empirical study of an open question in the continuous control literature. We show, with high confidence, that there is no meaningful difference in performance between Ornstein-Uhlenbeck noise and uncorrelated Gaussian noise for exploration with the DDPG algorithm on the DMC-CHS.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_18840
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Cross-environment Hyperparameter Setting Benchmark for Reinforcement Learning
Patterson, Andrew
Neumann, Samuel
Kumaraswamy, Raksha
White, Martha
White, Adam
Machine Learning
This paper introduces a new empirical methodology, the Cross-environment Hyperparameter Setting Benchmark, that compares RL algorithms across environments using a single hyperparameter setting, encouraging algorithmic development which is insensitive to hyperparameters. We demonstrate that this benchmark is robust to statistical noise and obtains qualitatively similar results across repeated applications, even when using few samples. This robustness makes the benchmark computationally cheap to apply, allowing statistically sound insights at low cost. We demonstrate two example instantiations of the CHS, on a set of six small control environments (SC-CHS) and on the entire DM Control suite of 28 environments (DMC-CHS). Finally, to illustrate the applicability of the CHS to modern RL algorithms on challenging environments, we conduct a novel empirical study of an open question in the continuous control literature. We show, with high confidence, that there is no meaningful difference in performance between Ornstein-Uhlenbeck noise and uncorrelated Gaussian noise for exploration with the DDPG algorithm on the DMC-CHS.
title The Cross-environment Hyperparameter Setting Benchmark for Reinforcement Learning
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.18840