arXiv:2510.15006cs.LG2025-10

改进经典算法C51,用更稳定的更新方式提升强化学习性能

ES-C51: Expected Sarsa Based C51 Distributional Reinforcement Learning Algorithm

  • 用Expected Sarsa替代C51的贪心更新,融合所有动作信息
  • 在多个环境上表现优于原版C51,尤其在动作收益相近时更稳定
  • 适合研究分布强化学习或需提升策略稳定性的开发者

多数基于价值的强化学习算法仅估计每个动作的期望奖励并选择最优动作。而分布强化学习(DRL)则估计可能奖励的完整概率分布,提供关于不确定性和变异性更丰富的信息。C51是离散动作空间中流行的DRL算法,采用Q-learning方法,通过贪心贝尔曼更新学习分布。但当某一状态中多个动作的期望奖励相近但分布不同时,该方法可能导致分布学习不稳定。本文提出一种改进版C51(ES-C51),将贪心Q-learning更新替换为Expected Sarsa更新,利用softmax机制综合状态所有动作的信息,而非依赖单一最优动作。这降低了相似期望奖励下学习的不稳定性,使智能体能学习到更高性能的策略。实验在Gym经典控制环境和Atari-10游戏上进行。为公平比较,将标准C51的探索策略从ε-greedy改为softmax,称为QL-C51。结果表明,ES-C51在多个环境中均优于QL-C51。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

In most value-based reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, the agent estimates only the expected reward for each action and selects the action with the highest reward. In contrast, Distributional Reinforcement Learning (DRL) estimates the entire probability distribution of possible rewards, providing richer information about uncertainty and variability. C51 is a popular DRL algorithm for discrete action spaces. It uses a Q-learning approach, where the distribution is learned using a greedy Bellman update. However, this can cause problems if multiple actions at a state have similar expected reward but with different distributions, as the algorithm may not learn a stable distribution. This study presents a modified version of C51 (ES-C51) that replaces the greedy Q-learning update with an Expected Sarsa update, which uses a softmax calculation to combine information from all possible actions at a state rather than relying on a single best action. This reduces instability when actions have similar expected rewards and allows the agent to learn higher-performing policies. This approach is evaluated on classic control environments from Gym, and Atari-10 games. For a fair comparison, we modify the standard C51's exploration strategy from e-greedy to softmax, which we refer to as QL-C51 (Q- Learning based C51). The results demonstrate that ES-C51 outperforms QL-C51 across many environments.

强化学习分布学习算法改进

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