用连续归一化流提升强化学习策略,无需计算复杂似然。
PolicyFlow: Policy Optimization with Continuous Normalizing Flow in Reinforcement Learning
- 通过速度场变化近似重要性比率,避免全路径似然计算。
- 在多目标、点迷宫等任务上性能超越传统PPO和流基方法。
- 引入布朗运动正则项防止模式崩溃,适合复杂行为学习。
在基于策略的强化学习中,近端策略优化(PPO)因其简洁性、数值稳定性和强实证表现而广受青睐。标准PPO依赖基于重要性比率的代理目标,当策略建模为高斯分布时,策略似然评估通常较简单。然而,将PPO扩展到更表达性强、高容量的连续归一化流(CNF)策略模型时面临挑战,因为沿整个流轨迹评估似然计算成本高且常数值不稳定。为此,我们提出PolicyFlow,一种新颖的基于CNF的在线策略强化学习算法,将表达性强的CNF策略与类PPO目标结合,无需对完整流路径进行似然评估。PolicyFlow通过简单插值路径上的速度场变化来近似重要性比率,显著降低计算开销且不牺牲训练稳定性。为进一步防止模式崩溃并促进多样化行为,我们提出布朗正则化器,一种受布朗运动启发的隐式策略熵正则项,概念优雅且计算轻量。在MultiGoal、PointMaze、IsaacLab和MuJoCo Playground等多个环境的多样化任务上,PolicyFlow的表现优于使用高斯策略的PPO及流基基线(如FPO和DPPO)。尤其在MultiGoal任务上,结果凸显了PolicyFlow捕捉更丰富多模态动作分布的能力。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Among on-policy reinforcement learning algorithms, Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) demonstrates is widely favored for its simplicity, numerical stability, and strong empirical performance. Standard PPO relies on surrogate objectives defined via importance ratios, which require evaluating policy likelihood that is typically straightforward when the policy is modeled as a Gaussian distribution. However, extending PPO to more expressive, high-capacity policy models such as continuous normalizing flows (CNFs), also known as flow-matching models, is challenging because likelihood evaluation along the full flow trajectory is computationally expensive and often numerically unstable. To resolve this issue, we propose PolicyFlow, a novel on-policy CNF-based reinforcement learning algorithm that integrates expressive CNF policies with PPO-style objectives without requiring likelihood evaluation along the full flow path. PolicyFlow approximates importance ratios using velocity field variations along a simple interpolation path, reducing computational overhead without compromising training stability. To further prevent mode collapse and further encourage diverse behaviors, we propose the Brownian Regularizer, an implicit policy entropy regularizer inspired by Brownian motion, which is conceptually elegant and computationally lightweight. Experiments on diverse tasks across various environments including MultiGoal, PointMaze, IsaacLab and MuJoCo Playground show that PolicyFlow achieves competitive or superior performance compared to PPO using Gaussian policies and flow-based baselines including FPO and DPPO. Notably, results on MultiGoal highlight PolicyFlow's ability to capture richer multimodal action distributions.
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