MAD-TD: Model-Augmented Data stabilizes High Update Ratio RL

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Voelcker, Claas A, Hussing, Marcel, Eaton, Eric, Farahmand, Amir-massoud, Gilitschenski, Igor
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Voelcker, Claas A
Hussing, Marcel
Eaton, Eric
Farahmand, Amir-massoud
Gilitschenski, Igor
author_facet Voelcker, Claas A
Hussing, Marcel
Eaton, Eric
Farahmand, Amir-massoud
Gilitschenski, Igor
contents Building deep reinforcement learning (RL) agents that find a good policy with few samples has proven notoriously challenging. To achieve sample efficiency, recent work has explored updating neural networks with large numbers of gradient steps for every new sample. While such high update-to-data (UTD) ratios have shown strong empirical performance, they also introduce instability to the training process. Previous approaches need to rely on periodic neural network parameter resets to address this instability, but restarting the training process is infeasible in many real-world applications and requires tuning the resetting interval. In this paper, we focus on one of the core difficulties of stable training with limited samples: the inability of learned value functions to generalize to unobserved on-policy actions. We mitigate this issue directly by augmenting the off-policy RL training process with a small amount of data generated from a learned world model. Our method, Model-Augmented Data for TD Learning (MAD-TD), uses small amounts of generated data to stabilize high UTD training and achieve competitive performance on the most challenging tasks in the DeepMind control suite. Our experiments further highlight the importance of employing a good model to generate data, MAD-TD's ability to combat value overestimation, and its practical stability gains for continued learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_08896
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MAD-TD: Model-Augmented Data stabilizes High Update Ratio RL
Voelcker, Claas A
Hussing, Marcel
Eaton, Eric
Farahmand, Amir-massoud
Gilitschenski, Igor
Machine Learning
Building deep reinforcement learning (RL) agents that find a good policy with few samples has proven notoriously challenging. To achieve sample efficiency, recent work has explored updating neural networks with large numbers of gradient steps for every new sample. While such high update-to-data (UTD) ratios have shown strong empirical performance, they also introduce instability to the training process. Previous approaches need to rely on periodic neural network parameter resets to address this instability, but restarting the training process is infeasible in many real-world applications and requires tuning the resetting interval. In this paper, we focus on one of the core difficulties of stable training with limited samples: the inability of learned value functions to generalize to unobserved on-policy actions. We mitigate this issue directly by augmenting the off-policy RL training process with a small amount of data generated from a learned world model. Our method, Model-Augmented Data for TD Learning (MAD-TD), uses small amounts of generated data to stabilize high UTD training and achieve competitive performance on the most challenging tasks in the DeepMind control suite. Our experiments further highlight the importance of employing a good model to generate data, MAD-TD's ability to combat value overestimation, and its practical stability gains for continued learning.
title MAD-TD: Model-Augmented Data stabilizes High Update Ratio RL
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08896