用在线数据生成专家行为先验,提升强化学习样本效率与稳定性
Expert Behavior Prior Reinforcement Learning

- 从在线回放缓冲区学习生成高价值动作,替代静态离线数据
- 在多个控制任务上实现更高样本效率和更稳定收敛
- 适合需要高效探索的机器人与工业控制场景
行为先验强化学习(BPRL)通过利用离线示范获得的策略先验,提升了在线强化学习的样本效率。然而,现有方法多依赖静态离线数据集,常面临数据多样性低、轨迹质量差的问题,限制了策略先验的有效性,导致探索效率低且训练不稳定。为此,本文提出专家行为先验(EBP)算法,引入一种基于Q值引导的条件变分自编码器(Q-CVAE),直接从在线回放缓冲区学习生成专家策略先验,无需预收集专家轨迹。为进一步提升策略利用,设计了专家策略引导(EPG)机制,从生成支持集中选择专家动作,并集成策略梯度修正(PGC)模块,使Q值指导与专家监督协同一致,促进稳定策略优化。在机器人控制(Gym、PyBullet)和工业控制(DMControl)基准上的大量实验表明,EBP显著优于当前主流在线强化学习算法,在样本效率和收敛稳定性方面均有显著提升。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Behavior prior reinforcement learning (BPRL) has emerged as a promising paradigm to improve sample efficiency in online reinforcement learning (RL) by leveraging policy priors derived from offline demonstrations. However, most existing BPRL methods rely on static offline datasets, which often suffer from low data diversity and suboptimal trajectory quality. This reliance restricts the effectiveness of policy priors, hindering both policy exploitation and stability during online training. Consequently, agents are prone to inefficient exploration and unstable learning dynamics. To address these limitations, we deviate from existing offline pre-training methods and propose an Expert Behavior Prior (EBP) algorithm. Specifically, we introduce a Q-guided conditional variational autoencoder (Q-CVAE) that learns to generate expert policy priors directly from the online replay buffer. This enables the generation of high-value actions for guiding policy updates without relying on pre-collected expert trajectories. To further enhance policy exploitation, we propose an expert policy guidance (EPG) mechanism that selects expert actions from a generative support set, and we integrate a policy gradient correction (PGC) module to harmonize Q-guidance with expert supervision, promoting stable and consistent policy improvement. Extensive experiments conducted on robotic control (Gym, PyBullet) and industrial control (DMControl) benchmarks demonstrate that EBP significantly outperforms state-of-the-art online RL algorithms, achieving higher sample efficiency and more stable convergence.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。