Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Loxley, Peter N.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.08893
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915982262403072
author Loxley, Peter N.
author_facet Loxley, Peter N.
contents Optimal control and sequential decision making are widely used in many complex tasks. Optimal control over a sequence of natural images is a first step towards understanding the role of vision in control. Here, we formalize this problem as a reinforcement learning task, and derive general conditions under which an image includes enough information to implement an optimal policy. Reinforcement learning is shown to provide a computationally efficient method for finding optimal policies when natural images are encoded into "efficient" image representations. This is demonstrated by introducing a new reinforcement learning benchmark that easily scales to large numbers of states and long horizons. In particular, by representing each image as an overcomplete sparse code, we are able to efficiently solve an optimal control task that is orders of magnitude larger than those tasks solvable using complete codes. Theoretical justification for this behaviour is provided. This work also demonstrates that deep learning is not necessary for efficient optimal control with natural images.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_08893
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimal Control with Natural Images: Efficient Reinforcement Learning using Overcomplete Sparse Codes
Loxley, Peter N.
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Systems and Control
Optimal control and sequential decision making are widely used in many complex tasks. Optimal control over a sequence of natural images is a first step towards understanding the role of vision in control. Here, we formalize this problem as a reinforcement learning task, and derive general conditions under which an image includes enough information to implement an optimal policy. Reinforcement learning is shown to provide a computationally efficient method for finding optimal policies when natural images are encoded into "efficient" image representations. This is demonstrated by introducing a new reinforcement learning benchmark that easily scales to large numbers of states and long horizons. In particular, by representing each image as an overcomplete sparse code, we are able to efficiently solve an optimal control task that is orders of magnitude larger than those tasks solvable using complete codes. Theoretical justification for this behaviour is provided. This work also demonstrates that deep learning is not necessary for efficient optimal control with natural images.
title Optimal Control with Natural Images: Efficient Reinforcement Learning using Overcomplete Sparse Codes
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.08893