arXiv:2605.11473cs.AIcs.LG2026-05

TOPPO改进PPO在多任务强化学习中的梯度问题,提升难任务表现。

TOPPO: Rethinking PPO for Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning with Critic Balancing

论文配图:TOPPO: Rethinking PPO for Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning with Critic Balancing
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 通过批评者平衡模块改善梯度条件,解决多任务中难任务停滞问题。
  • 在Meta-World+上性能超越SAC和ARS基线,参数和步数更少。
  • 适合追求高效、低资源多任务强化学习的研究者或工程应用。

软演员-批评家(SAC)及其变体因离策略采样效率高,在多任务强化学习(MTRL)中占据主导地位,而在线策略方法如近端策略优化(PPO)仍被低估。我们诊断出PPO在MTRL中存在此前未被关注的问题:批评者侧梯度病态,可能导致简单任务主导价值函数更新,使难任务停滞。为此,我们提出TOPPO(尾部优化的PPO),通过批评者平衡——一组改善梯度条件并平衡任务间学习动态的模块——对PPO进行重构。与依赖模块化架构或大模型的先前方法不同,TOPPO聚焦于PPO内部的优化瓶颈。实验表明,TOPPO在Meta-World+基准上以显著更少的参数和环境步数,实现了优于已发表SAC族和ARS族基线的均值与尾部任务性能。值得注意的是,TOPPO在训练早期即匹配或超越强SAC基线,并在完整预算下保持优势。消融实验证实了每个模块的有效性及相互作用。结果表明,通过恰当优化,在线策略方法可在MTRL中媲美甚至超越离策略方法,挑战了对SAC的普遍依赖,凸显批评者侧梯度条件是核心瓶颈。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) and its variants dominate Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning (MTRL) due to their off-policy sample efficiency, while on-policy methods such as Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) remain underexplored. We diagnose that PPO in MTRL suffers from a previously overlooked issue: critic-side gradient ill-conditioning, which may cause tail tasks to stall while easy tasks dominate the value function's updates. To address this, we propose TOPPO (Tail-Optimized PPO), a reformulation of PPO via Critic Balancing -- a set of modules that improve gradient conditioning and balance learning dynamics across tasks. Unlike prior approaches that rely on modular architectures or large models, TOPPO targets the optimization bottleneck within PPO itself. Empirically, TOPPO achieves stronger mean and tail-task performance than published SAC-family and ARS-family baselines while using substantially fewer parameters and environment steps on Meta-World+ benchmark. Notably, TOPPO matches or surpasses strong SAC baselines early in training and maintains superior performance at full budget. Ablations confirm the effectiveness of each module in TOPPO and provide insights into their interactions. Our results demonstrate that, with proper optimization, on-policy methods can rival or exceed off-policy approaches in MTRL, challenging the prevailing reliance on SAC and highlighting critic-side gradient conditioning as the central bottleneck.

强化学习多任务PPO优化改进

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