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Main Authors: Luo, Wang, Li, Haoran, Zhang, Zicheng, Han, Congying, Zhou, Chi, Lv, Jiayu, Guo, Tiande
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.12830
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author Luo, Wang
Li, Haoran
Zhang, Zicheng
Han, Congying
Zhou, Chi
Lv, Jiayu
Guo, Tiande
author_facet Luo, Wang
Li, Haoran
Zhang, Zicheng
Han, Congying
Zhou, Chi
Lv, Jiayu
Guo, Tiande
contents Model-based offline reinforcement learning trains policies using pre-collected datasets and learned environment models, eliminating the need for direct real-world environment interaction. However, this paradigm is inherently challenged by distribution shift~(DS). Existing methods address this issue by leveraging off-policy mechanisms and estimating model uncertainty, but they often result in inconsistent objectives and lack a unified theoretical foundation. This paper offers a comprehensive analysis that disentangles the problem into two fundamental components: model bias and policy shift. Our theoretical and empirical investigations reveal how these factors distort value estimation and restrict policy optimization. To tackle these challenges, we derive a novel shifts-aware reward through a unified probabilistic inference framework, which modifies the vanilla reward to refine value learning and facilitate policy training. Building on this, we develop a practical implementation that leverages classifier-based techniques to approximate the adjusted reward for effective policy optimization. Empirical results across multiple benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed approach mitigates distribution shift and achieves superior or comparable performance, validating our theoretical insights.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_12830
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mitigating Distribution Shift in Model-based Offline RL via Shifts-aware Reward Learning
Luo, Wang
Li, Haoran
Zhang, Zicheng
Han, Congying
Zhou, Chi
Lv, Jiayu
Guo, Tiande
Machine Learning
Model-based offline reinforcement learning trains policies using pre-collected datasets and learned environment models, eliminating the need for direct real-world environment interaction. However, this paradigm is inherently challenged by distribution shift~(DS). Existing methods address this issue by leveraging off-policy mechanisms and estimating model uncertainty, but they often result in inconsistent objectives and lack a unified theoretical foundation. This paper offers a comprehensive analysis that disentangles the problem into two fundamental components: model bias and policy shift. Our theoretical and empirical investigations reveal how these factors distort value estimation and restrict policy optimization. To tackle these challenges, we derive a novel shifts-aware reward through a unified probabilistic inference framework, which modifies the vanilla reward to refine value learning and facilitate policy training. Building on this, we develop a practical implementation that leverages classifier-based techniques to approximate the adjusted reward for effective policy optimization. Empirical results across multiple benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed approach mitigates distribution shift and achieves superior or comparable performance, validating our theoretical insights.
title Mitigating Distribution Shift in Model-based Offline RL via Shifts-aware Reward Learning
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.12830