仅用奖励反馈提升强化学习泛化能力,无需轨迹数据。
Evolutionary Bilevel Reward Shaping for Generalization in Reinforcement Learning

- 上下层优化:上层用CMA-ES调奖励函数,下层用RL学策略。
- 在未见环境中性能超越标准RL,接近域随机化效果。
- 适合隐私保护或轨迹不可见的受限场景使用。
强化学习在部署到与训练环境不同的测试环境时,常出现性能下降。现有方法如域随机化(DR)虽能缓解此问题,但需访问多样训练环境及完整轨迹数据,在隐私保护或数据受限场景中不适用。本文提出通过进化奖励塑造(GERS)实现泛化,仅依赖验证环境的标量性能反馈。下层:基于上层优化的奖励函数,代理在有限训练环境上学习策略;上层:使用CMA-ES优化奖励塑造参数,以最大化在无轨迹访问的独立验证环境上的累积原始奖励。连续控制任务实验表明,GERS在未见测试环境上的表现优于标准强化学习基线,且性能接近域随机化(尽管后者将训练与验证环境合并为单一训练集并需轨迹访问)。结果证明,GERS在数据访问受限条件下仍可有效提升泛化能力。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Reinforcement learning (RL) often suffers from performance degradation when deployed in environments that differ from those encountered during training. Existing techniques such as domain randomization (DR) mitigate this, but require access to diverse training environments and full trajectory observability, assumptions that fail in privacy-preserving or restricted scenarios where only scalar performance metrics are available. We propose Generalization via Evolutionary Reward Shaping (GERS), a bilevel optimization approach to improve generalization on unseen test environments using only scalar feedback from validation environments. At the lower level, an RL agent guided via a reward function shaped by the upper level learns a policy on a limited set of training environments with accessible trajectory data; at the upper level, CMA-ES optimizes the reward shaping parameters to maximize the cumulative unshaped reward on separate validation environments for which trajectory access is unavailable. Results on continuous control tasks indicate that GERS outperforms the standard RL baseline on unseen test environments. GERS performance is comparable to DR, despite DR treating the combined set of training and validation environments of GERS as a single training set that requires trajectory access, whereas GERS cannot access validation trajectories. These results confirm that GERS effectively enhances generalization under restricted data access constraints.
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