Hybrid Transfer Reinforcement Learning: Provable Sample Efficiency from Shifted-Dynamics Data

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Qu, Chengrui, Shi, Laixi, Panaganti, Kishan, You, Pengcheng, Wierman, Adam
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Qu, Chengrui
Shi, Laixi
Panaganti, Kishan
You, Pengcheng
Wierman, Adam
author_facet Qu, Chengrui
Shi, Laixi
Panaganti, Kishan
You, Pengcheng
Wierman, Adam
contents Online Reinforcement learning (RL) typically requires high-stakes online interaction data to learn a policy for a target task. This prompts interest in leveraging historical data to improve sample efficiency. The historical data may come from outdated or related source environments with different dynamics. It remains unclear how to effectively use such data in the target task to provably enhance learning and sample efficiency. To address this, we propose a hybrid transfer RL (HTRL) setting, where an agent learns in a target environment while accessing offline data from a source environment with shifted dynamics. We show that -- without information on the dynamics shift -- general shifted-dynamics data, even with subtle shifts, does not reduce sample complexity in the target environment. However, with prior information on the degree of the dynamics shift, we design HySRL, a transfer algorithm that achieves problem-dependent sample complexity and outperforms pure online RL. Finally, our experimental results demonstrate that HySRL surpasses state-of-the-art online RL baseline.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_03810
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hybrid Transfer Reinforcement Learning: Provable Sample Efficiency from Shifted-Dynamics Data
Qu, Chengrui
Shi, Laixi
Panaganti, Kishan
You, Pengcheng
Wierman, Adam
Machine Learning
Online Reinforcement learning (RL) typically requires high-stakes online interaction data to learn a policy for a target task. This prompts interest in leveraging historical data to improve sample efficiency. The historical data may come from outdated or related source environments with different dynamics. It remains unclear how to effectively use such data in the target task to provably enhance learning and sample efficiency. To address this, we propose a hybrid transfer RL (HTRL) setting, where an agent learns in a target environment while accessing offline data from a source environment with shifted dynamics. We show that -- without information on the dynamics shift -- general shifted-dynamics data, even with subtle shifts, does not reduce sample complexity in the target environment. However, with prior information on the degree of the dynamics shift, we design HySRL, a transfer algorithm that achieves problem-dependent sample complexity and outperforms pure online RL. Finally, our experimental results demonstrate that HySRL surpasses state-of-the-art online RL baseline.
title Hybrid Transfer Reinforcement Learning: Provable Sample Efficiency from Shifted-Dynamics Data
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.03810