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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Xia, Zixuan, Li, Quanxi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.23056
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Table of Contents:
  • We propose a simple yet effective alternative to reward normalization in policy gradient reinforcement learning by integrating a 1D Kalman filter for online reward estimation. Instead of relying on fixed heuristics, our method recursively estimates the latent reward mean, smoothing high-variance returns and adapting to non-stationary environments. This approach incurs minimal overhead and requires no modification to existing policy architectures. Experiments on \textit{LunarLander} and \textit{CartPole} demonstrate that Kalman-filtered rewards significantly accelerate convergence and reduce training variance compared to standard normalization techniques. Code is available at https://github.com/Sumxiaa/Kalman_Normalization.