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Autores principales: Gu, Yuliang, Cao, Hongpeng, Caccamo, Marco, Hovakimyan, Naira
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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Acceso en línea:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02205
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author Gu, Yuliang
Cao, Hongpeng
Caccamo, Marco
Hovakimyan, Naira
author_facet Gu, Yuliang
Cao, Hongpeng
Caccamo, Marco
Hovakimyan, Naira
contents The Cross-Entropy Method (CEM) is a widely adopted trajectory optimizer in model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL), but its unimodal sampling strategy often leads to premature convergence in multimodal landscapes. In this work, we propose Bregman Centroid Guided CEM ($\mathcal{BC}$-EvoCEM), a lightweight enhancement to ensemble CEM that leverages $\textit{Bregman centroids}$ for principled information aggregation and diversity control. $\textbf{$\mathcal{BC}$-EvoCEM}$ computes a performance-weighted Bregman centroid across CEM workers and updates the least contributing ones by sampling within a trust region around the centroid. Leveraging the duality between Bregman divergences and exponential family distributions, we show that $\textbf{$\mathcal{BC}$-EvoCEM}$ integrates seamlessly into standard CEM pipelines with negligible overhead. Empirical results on synthetic benchmarks, a cluttered navigation task, and full MBRL pipelines demonstrate that $\textbf{$\mathcal{BC}$-EvoCEM}$ enhances both convergence and solution quality, providing a simple yet effective upgrade for CEM.
format Preprint
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publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bregman Centroid Guided Cross-Entropy Method
Gu, Yuliang
Cao, Hongpeng
Caccamo, Marco
Hovakimyan, Naira
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Systems and Control
The Cross-Entropy Method (CEM) is a widely adopted trajectory optimizer in model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL), but its unimodal sampling strategy often leads to premature convergence in multimodal landscapes. In this work, we propose Bregman Centroid Guided CEM ($\mathcal{BC}$-EvoCEM), a lightweight enhancement to ensemble CEM that leverages $\textit{Bregman centroids}$ for principled information aggregation and diversity control. $\textbf{$\mathcal{BC}$-EvoCEM}$ computes a performance-weighted Bregman centroid across CEM workers and updates the least contributing ones by sampling within a trust region around the centroid. Leveraging the duality between Bregman divergences and exponential family distributions, we show that $\textbf{$\mathcal{BC}$-EvoCEM}$ integrates seamlessly into standard CEM pipelines with negligible overhead. Empirical results on synthetic benchmarks, a cluttered navigation task, and full MBRL pipelines demonstrate that $\textbf{$\mathcal{BC}$-EvoCEM}$ enhances both convergence and solution quality, providing a simple yet effective upgrade for CEM.
title Bregman Centroid Guided Cross-Entropy Method
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02205