arXiv:2608.12912cs.LG2026-08

提出动作交集策略,解决大动作空间下Q-learning的高估偏差问题。

Revisiting Overestimation Bias Problem of Q-learning: Settling Large Discrete Action Space via Action Intersection

论文配图:Revisiting Overestimation Bias Problem of Q-learning: Settling Large Discrete Action Space via Action Intersection
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 用动作交集实现半解耦:共享数据时耦合更新,否则解耦更新。
  • 在深度强化学习中显著超越多个先进基线方法。
  • 可调节偏差范围与粒度,适合大规模离散动作场景。

本文研究大动作空间下Q-learning的高估偏差问题,发现动作空间增大加剧了Q值估计的随机性。现有两大范式各有瓶颈:耦合范式(最优动作与Q值由同一函数估计)因随机性导致正偏差;解耦范式(使用两个独立函数)则因估计差距产生负偏差。本文提出动作交集策略,通过允许两Q函数共享部分轨迹数据实现半解耦:共享样本时采用耦合更新,否则解耦更新。该策略具备两大优势:一是可调偏差范围,通过调节共享比例使偏差在低估与高估间连续变化;二是细粒度控制,交集大小可任意细化。实验在表格和深度强化学习场景中均验证有效性,深度RL结果显著优于多个SOTA基线,表格实验揭示其性能优越的内在原因。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

This paper considers the overestimation bias problem of Q-learning in the setting of a large action space, for the purpose of relieving the bottleneck of existing methods. We find that the large action space increases the randomness in Q-value estimation. The randomness makes two paradigms that drive the major literature on the overestimation problem have their own bottlenecks: the coupling paradigm, i.e., the optimal action and its Q-value are estimated with the same Q-function, always has a positive bias. This is because randomness leads to some actions having abnormally high estimated values than their true values, and the coupling methods prefer these actions. The decoupling paradigm, i.e., the optimal action and its Q-value are estimated with two independent Q-functions, always has a negative bias. This is because randomness increases the estimation gap between the two independent Q-tables for the same action. This paper shows that action intersection can be a simple yet powerful strategy to relieve these bottlenecks. The action intersection strategy enables semi-decoupling via two designs: (1) it allows two Q-functions to share a certain fraction of trajectory data; (2) if a data sample is shared, each Q-function is updated using the coupling paradigm; otherwise, using the decoupling paradigm. Two properties make the action intersection strategy powerful: (1) attaining a large bias range, i.e., varying the data sharing fraction, the estimation bias varies from underestimating to overestimating; (2) fine granularity: the action intersection size can be made arbitrarily finer to enable finer control. We consider two experiment settings, i.e., tabular and deep RL, deep RL experiments show that our method outperforms several SOTA baselines drastically; tabular experiments reveal why our method can achieve superior performance.

强化学习Q-learning高估偏差动作空间

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