Full-Gradient Successor Feature Representations

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Shrirao, Ritish, Priyadarshi, Aditya, Diddigi, Raghuram Bharadwaj
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866908930654863360
author Shrirao, Ritish
Priyadarshi, Aditya
Diddigi, Raghuram Bharadwaj
author_facet Shrirao, Ritish
Priyadarshi, Aditya
Diddigi, Raghuram Bharadwaj
contents Successor Features (SF) combined with Generalized Policy Improvement (GPI) provide a robust framework for transfer learning in Reinforcement Learning (RL) by decoupling environment dynamics from reward functions. However, standard SF learning methods typically rely on semi-gradient Temporal Difference (TD) updates. When combined with non-linear function approximation, semi-gradient methods lack robust convergence guarantees and can lead to instability, particularly in the multi-task setting where accurate feature estimation is critical for effective GPI. Inspired by Full Gradient DQN, we propose Full-Gradient Successor Feature Representations Q-Learning (FG-SFRQL), an algorithm that optimizes the successor features by minimizing the full Mean Squared Bellman Error. Unlike standard approaches, our method computes gradients with respect to parameters in both the online and target networks. We provide a theoretical proof of almost-sure convergence for FG-SFRQL and demonstrate empirically that minimizing the full residual leads to superior sample efficiency and transfer performance compared to semi-gradient baselines in both discrete and continuous domains.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_00686
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Full-Gradient Successor Feature Representations
Shrirao, Ritish
Priyadarshi, Aditya
Diddigi, Raghuram Bharadwaj
Machine Learning
Successor Features (SF) combined with Generalized Policy Improvement (GPI) provide a robust framework for transfer learning in Reinforcement Learning (RL) by decoupling environment dynamics from reward functions. However, standard SF learning methods typically rely on semi-gradient Temporal Difference (TD) updates. When combined with non-linear function approximation, semi-gradient methods lack robust convergence guarantees and can lead to instability, particularly in the multi-task setting where accurate feature estimation is critical for effective GPI. Inspired by Full Gradient DQN, we propose Full-Gradient Successor Feature Representations Q-Learning (FG-SFRQL), an algorithm that optimizes the successor features by minimizing the full Mean Squared Bellman Error. Unlike standard approaches, our method computes gradients with respect to parameters in both the online and target networks. We provide a theoretical proof of almost-sure convergence for FG-SFRQL and demonstrate empirically that minimizing the full residual leads to superior sample efficiency and transfer performance compared to semi-gradient baselines in both discrete and continuous domains.
title Full-Gradient Successor Feature Representations
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.00686