提出新方法提升长时序强化学习稳定性,减少误差累积。
Long-Horizon Q-Learning: Accurate Value Learning via n-Step Inequalities

- 用n步不等式构建惩罚机制,防止误差传播
- 在多个基准上优于传统1步和n步TD学习
- 无需额外网络或计算,可直接集成到现有Q-learning
基于值的离线策略强化学习方法(如Q-learning)因其能从任意经验中学习而受到青睐,包括旧策略或其他智能体收集的数据。然而,实际应用中,自举法导致长时序学习脆弱:后期状态的估计误差会通过时序差分(TD)更新向后传播并随时间累积。本文提出长时序Q-learning(LQL),通过引入一种原则性机制来抑制误差累积。其核心思想是:任何已实现的动作序列都为最优策略的期望收益提供下界,因此早期采取最优行为不应劣于先执行观察动作再切换至最优策略。我们将其转化为可操作的稳定化机制,使用铰链损失惩罚违反该边界的案例。关键优势在于,这些惩罚基于已用于计算TD误差的网络输出,无需辅助网络或额外前向传播。在多种在线与离线转在线基准测试中,结合多项前沿方法,LQL在相似运行时间下持续优于1步和n步TD学习。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Off-policy, value-based reinforcement learning methods such as Q-learning are appealing because they can learn from arbitrary experience, including data collected by older policies or other agents. In practice, however, bootstrapping makes long-horizon learning brittle: estimation errors at later states propagate backward through temporal-difference (TD) updates and can compound over time. We propose long-horizon Q-learning (LQL), which introduces a principled backstop against compounding error when learning the optimal action-value function. LQL builds on a prior optimality tightening observation: any realized action sequence lower-bounds what the optimal policy can achieve in expectation, so acting optimally earlier should not be worse than following the observed actions for several steps before switching to optimal behavior. Our contribution is to turn this inequality into a practical stabilization mechanism for Q-learning by using a hinge loss to penalize violations of these bounds. Importantly, LQL computes these penalties using network outputs already produced for the TD error, requiring no auxiliary networks and no additional forward passes relative to Q-learning. When combined with multiple state-of-the-art methods on a range of online and offline-to-online benchmarks, LQL consistently outperforms both 1-step TD and n-step TD learning at similar runtime.
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