在上下文MDP中,训练无关状态能提升泛化能力。
Training on Irrelevant States Implies Data Augmentation: Generalization in Contextual MDPs
- 通过引入纯探索阶段,让智能体在每轮训练初期接触更多状态。
- 结合多种算法,在多个泛化基准上测试性能显著提升。
- 适合需要强泛化能力的强化学习应用,尤其对部分可观测任务有效。
在零样本策略迁移(ZSPT)场景下,智能体在有限的上下文集合上训练,需泛化到未见上下文中。近期研究发现,即使训练时包含与当前任务无关的状态,也能提升泛化能力。本文验证了这一现象,同时指出训练无关状态可能降低价值函数精度,反而损害泛化。我们提出新方法Explore-Go:在每轮训练开始前加入纯探索阶段,利用现有探索策略提升状态覆盖。该方法可与在线和离线策略算法结合。实验表明,结合多种主流算法后,测试性能在多个泛化基准(包括部分可观测环境)上均有提升,为实践者提供简单有效的泛化增强手段。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
In the zero-shot policy transfer (ZSPT) setting for contextual Markov decision processes (CMDP), agents train on a fixed, finite set of contexts and must generalize to new ones. Recent work has demonstrated that training on additional states, even if they are irrelevant for solving the current context, can improve generalization to unseen contexts. In this paper, we demonstrate that training on these states can indeed improve generalization, but can come at a cost of reducing the accuracy of the learned value function, which should hurt generalization. We hypothesize and demonstrate that increasing the agent's coverage by training on these additional states while also increasing the accuracy improves generalization even further. Inspired by this, we propose a simple approach Explore-Go that leverages existing pure exploration strategies in a new way: by introducing a pure exploration phase at the start of each training episode. Unlike previous approaches that apply exploration strategies for the purpose of improving generalization, our approach can be combined with both on- and off-policy algorithms. We demonstrate the effectiveness of Explore-Go when combined with several popular algorithms and show an increase in test-time performance across several generalization benchmarks, even partially observable ones. With this, we hope to provide practitioners with a simple modification that can significantly improve the generalization of their agents.
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