让强化学习在真实世界中零样本泛化,解决数据少、观测不全、难获取的难题。
On Zero-Shot Reinforcement Learning
- 在数据少、观测不全、无先验数据条件下设计零样本强化学习方法
- 实证发现现有方法在真实场景下失效,新方法显著提升泛化能力
- 适合部署于真实世界决策任务,如机器人控制、医疗干预等
现代强化学习系统揭示了人类解决问题的核心机制。在可廉价模拟新数据的领域,这些系统能发现超越人类的序列决策策略。然而,许多现实问题所在领域难以低成本生成新数据。尽管可通过现有数据学习仿真器,但其仅近似正确,且在训练分布外可能严重失准,导致训练与真实部署环境存在不可避免的偏差。零样本强化学习正是应对这一偏差的关键,要求代理在无任何试错机会下泛化至新任务或领域。尽管理想环境中已有显著进展,但要将其推广至真实场景仍需突破。本文指出需克服三大约束:数据质量差(数据量小且同质)、可观测性受限(状态、动态、奖励部分可观测)、数据不可得(无法预先获取数据)。本文提出一套在上述约束下可行的零样本强化学习方法。通过一系列实验,揭示现有方法的缺陷,并验证所提技术的有效性。我们相信这些设计推动了强化学习向真实世界应用迈出关键一步。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Modern reinforcement learning (RL) systems capture deep truths about general, human problem-solving. In domains where new data can be simulated cheaply, these systems uncover sequential decision-making policies that far exceed the ability of any human. Society faces many problems whose solutions require this skill, but they are often in domains where new data cannot be cheaply simulated. In such scenarios, we can learn simulators from existing data, but these will only ever be approximately correct, and can be pathologically incorrect when queried outside of their training distribution. As a result, a misalignment between the environments in which we train our agents and the real-world in which we wish to deploy our agents is inevitable. Dealing with this misalignment is the primary concern of zero-shot reinforcement learning, a problem setting where the agent must generalise to a new task or domain with zero practice shots. Whilst impressive progress has been made on methods that perform zero-shot RL in idealised settings, new work is needed if these results are to be replicated in real-world settings. In this thesis, we argue that doing so requires us to navigate (at least) three constraints. First, the data quality constraint: real-world datasets are small and homogeneous. Second, the observability constraint: states, dynamics and rewards in the real-world are often only partially observed. And third, the data availability constraint: a priori access to data cannot always be assumed. This work proposes a suite of methods that perform zero-shot RL subject to these constraints. In a series of empirical studies we expose the failings of existing methods, and justify our techniques for remedying them. We believe these designs take us a step closer to RL methods that can be deployed to solve real-world problems.
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