arXiv:2506.13345cs.LG2025-06被引 4

一种无需调参的探索方法,适配密集、稀疏及抑制探索的奖励场景。

Learning to Explore in Diverse Reward Settings via Temporal-Difference-Error Maximization

  • 通过最大化时序差分误差实现自适应探索
  • 在三种不同奖励设置下均表现稳定,无需调整超参数
  • 可无缝集成到现有强化学习算法中,适合多场景应用

深度强化学习中的探索策略常依赖启发式或复杂方法,噪声驱动方法在密集奖励下表现良好,基于奖励增益的方法适用于稀疏奖励,但通常需调参应对不良奖励结构。当奖励主动抑制探索(如存在动作成本且无密集信号)时,挑战尤为严峻。本文提出一种新方法——稳定误差寻求探索(SEE),在密集、稀疏及探索抑制型奖励设置下均具鲁棒性。该方法重新审视以最大化时序差分误差(TD-error)作为独立目标的思路,引入三项设计:缓解远偏离策略学习导致的不稳定性,解决回合制环境中累积TD误差最大化带来的利益冲突,处理TD误差的非平稳性。SEE可与离策略算法结合,无需修改原始优化流程。实验表明,加入SEE的软演员-评论家(SAC)代理在多种任务中跨三类奖励设置表现稳健,无需超参数调整。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Numerous heuristics and advanced approaches have been proposed for exploration in different settings for deep reinforcement learning. Noise-based exploration generally fares well with dense-shaped rewards and bonus-based exploration with sparse rewards. However, these methods usually require additional tuning to deal with undesirable reward settings by adjusting hyperparameters and noise distributions. Rewards that actively discourage exploration, i.e., with an action cost and no other dense signal to follow, can pose a major challenge. We propose a novel exploration method, Stable Error-seeking Exploration (SEE), that is robust across dense, sparse, and exploration-adverse reward settings. To this endeavor, we revisit the idea of maximizing the TD-error as a separate objective. Our method introduces three design choices to mitigate instability caused by far-off-policy learning, the conflict of interest of maximizing the cumulative TD-error in an episodic setting, and the non-stationary nature of TD-errors. SEE can be combined with off-policy algorithms without modifying the optimization pipeline of the original objective. In our experimental analysis, we show that a Soft-Actor Critic agent with the addition of SEE performs robustly across three diverse reward settings in a variety of tasks without hyperparameter adjustments.

强化学习探索策略TD误差鲁棒性

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