Learning from Less: SINDy Surrogates in RL

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Dixit, Aniket, Khan, Muhammad Ibrahim, Ahmed, Faizan, Brusey, James
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Dixit, Aniket
Khan, Muhammad Ibrahim
Ahmed, Faizan
Brusey, James
author_facet Dixit, Aniket
Khan, Muhammad Ibrahim
Ahmed, Faizan
Brusey, James
contents This paper introduces an approach for developing surrogate environments in reinforcement learning (RL) using the Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics (SINDy) algorithm. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through extensive experiments in OpenAI Gym environments, particularly Mountain Car and Lunar Lander. Our results show that SINDy-based surrogate models can accurately capture the underlying dynamics of these environments while reducing computational costs by 20-35%. With only 75 interactions for Mountain Car and 1000 for Lunar Lander, we achieve state-wise correlations exceeding 0.997, with mean squared errors as low as 3.11e-06 for Mountain Car velocity and 1.42e-06 for LunarLander position. RL agents trained in these surrogate environments require fewer total steps (65,075 vs. 100,000 for Mountain Car and 801,000 vs. 1,000,000 for Lunar Lander) while achieving comparable performance to those trained in the original environments, exhibiting similar convergence patterns and final performance metrics. This work contributes to the field of model-based RL by providing an efficient method for generating accurate, interpretable surrogate environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_18113
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning from Less: SINDy Surrogates in RL
Dixit, Aniket
Khan, Muhammad Ibrahim
Ahmed, Faizan
Brusey, James
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
This paper introduces an approach for developing surrogate environments in reinforcement learning (RL) using the Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics (SINDy) algorithm. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through extensive experiments in OpenAI Gym environments, particularly Mountain Car and Lunar Lander. Our results show that SINDy-based surrogate models can accurately capture the underlying dynamics of these environments while reducing computational costs by 20-35%. With only 75 interactions for Mountain Car and 1000 for Lunar Lander, we achieve state-wise correlations exceeding 0.997, with mean squared errors as low as 3.11e-06 for Mountain Car velocity and 1.42e-06 for LunarLander position. RL agents trained in these surrogate environments require fewer total steps (65,075 vs. 100,000 for Mountain Car and 801,000 vs. 1,000,000 for Lunar Lander) while achieving comparable performance to those trained in the original environments, exhibiting similar convergence patterns and final performance metrics. This work contributes to the field of model-based RL by providing an efficient method for generating accurate, interpretable surrogate environments.
title Learning from Less: SINDy Surrogates in RL
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.18113