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arxiv: 1805.12114 · v2 · pith:SDGOT44Fnew · submitted 2018-05-30 · 💻 cs.LG · cs.AI· cs.RO· stat.ML

Deep Reinforcement Learning in a Handful of Trials using Probabilistic Dynamics Models

classification 💻 cs.LG cs.AIcs.ROstat.ML
keywords algorithmsdeepdynamicsmodel-freemodelsasymptoticfewerlearning
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Model-based reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms can attain excellent sample efficiency, but often lag behind the best model-free algorithms in terms of asymptotic performance. This is especially true with high-capacity parametric function approximators, such as deep networks. In this paper, we study how to bridge this gap, by employing uncertainty-aware dynamics models. We propose a new algorithm called probabilistic ensembles with trajectory sampling (PETS) that combines uncertainty-aware deep network dynamics models with sampling-based uncertainty propagation. Our comparison to state-of-the-art model-based and model-free deep RL algorithms shows that our approach matches the asymptotic performance of model-free algorithms on several challenging benchmark tasks, while requiring significantly fewer samples (e.g., 8 and 125 times fewer samples than Soft Actor Critic and Proximal Policy Optimization respectively on the half-cheetah task).

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Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Benchmarking Model-Based Reinforcement Learning

    cs.LG 2019-07 accept novelty 7.0

    Introduces a benchmark suite of over 18 MBRL environments, evaluates multiple algorithms under consistent settings, and identifies three core challenges: dynamics bottleneck, planning horizon dilemma, and early-termin...

  2. Exploring Model-based Planning with Policy Networks

    cs.LG 2019-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    POPLIN combines policy networks with model-predictive planning by optimizing either action sequences or policy parameters, yielding 3x better sample efficiency than PETS, TD3 and SAC on MuJoCo locomotion tasks.

  3. Global Convergence of Sampling-Based Nonconvex Optimization through Diffusion-Style Smoothing

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  5. Beyond Euclidean Proximity: Repairing Latent World Models with Horizon-Matched Trajectory Reachability Metrics

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