对比多种深度强化学习算法在持续任务中的表现,发现奖励中心化方法普适有效。
An Empirical Study of Deep Reinforcement Learning in Continuing Tasks
- 在连续任务中测试多个主流深度强化学习算法,构建基于Mujoco和Atari的评估基准
- 验证奖励中心化能提升算法性能,且在更大规模任务中仍有效
- 适用于多种算法,优于其他两种奖励中心化方法,适合实际长期运行场景
强化学习中的持续任务指智能体与环境交互持续进行、无法划分为独立回合的任务。这类任务常见于环境无法重置或需累计所有奖励的实际场景,但现有深度强化学习研究多聚焦于回合制任务。本文通过基于Mujoco和Atari的持续任务测试平台,对多个主流深度RL算法进行实证分析,揭示其在持续任务中的行为特征。同时,研究了Naik等人(2024)提出的奖励中心化方法在时序差分算法中的有效性。结果表明,该方法不仅在原研究基础上扩展至更广泛算法,且在更大规模任务中依然有效,优于另外两种奖励中心化策略。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
In reinforcement learning (RL), continuing tasks refer to tasks where the agent-environment interaction is ongoing and can not be broken down into episodes. These tasks are suitable when environment resets are unavailable, agent-controlled, or predefined but where all rewards-including those beyond resets-are critical. These scenarios frequently occur in real-world applications and can not be modeled by episodic tasks. While modern deep RL algorithms have been extensively studied and well understood in episodic tasks, their behavior in continuing tasks remains underexplored. To address this gap, we provide an empirical study of several well-known deep RL algorithms using a suite of continuing task testbeds based on Mujoco and Atari environments, highlighting several key insights concerning continuing tasks. Using these testbeds, we also investigate the effectiveness of a method for improving temporal-difference-based RL algorithms in continuing tasks by centering rewards, as introduced by Naik et al. (2024). While their work primarily focused on this method in conjunction with Q-learning, our results extend their findings by demonstrating that this method is effective across a broader range of algorithms, scales to larger tasks, and outperforms two other reward-centering approaches.
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