Reinforcement Learning
Minigrid & Miniworld: Modular & Customizable Reinforcement Learning Environments for Goal-Oriented Tasks Supplementary Materials
The source code of Minigrid and Miniworld can be found at https://github.com/ To run the experiments, we have implemented the following functionalities: 1. implemented the human trajectory saving for MiniGrid-FourRooms-v0 (copied the ManualControlclass from Minigrid and added 38 lines of code, which are mostly calling data saving functions); 2. implemented the human trajectory saving for MiniWorld-FourRooms-v0 (copied the ManualControlclass from Miniworld and added 45 lines of code, which are mostly calling data saving functions); 3. implemented data saving and plotting for MiniGrid-FourRooms-v0 (33 lines of code, mostly for Matplotlib); 4. implemented data saving and plotting for MiniWorld-FourRooms-v0 (33 lines of code, mostly for Matplotlib). In total, the implementation of this new functionality required 149 lines of code. The source code is hosted on GitHub. We bear all the responsibility in case of violation of rights.
Resetting the Optimizer in Deep RL: An Empirical Study
We focus on the task of approximating the optimal value function in deep reinforcement learning. This iterative process is comprised of solving a sequence of optimization problems where the loss function changes per iteration. The common approach to solving this sequence of problems is to employ modern variants of the stochastic gradient descent algorithm such as Adam. These optimizers maintain their own internal parameters such as estimates of the first-order and the secondorder moments of the gradient, and update them over time. Therefore, information obtained in previous iterations is used to solve the optimization problem in the current iteration. We demonstrate that this can contaminate the moment estimates because the optimization landscape can change arbitrarily from one iteration to the next one. To hedge against this negative effect, a simple idea is to reset the internal parameters of the optimizer when starting a new iteration. We empirically investigate this resetting idea by employing various optimizers in conjunction with the Rainbow algorithm. We demonstrate that this simple modification significantly improves the performance of deep RL on the Atari benchmark.
ASimulation Benchmark for Autonomous Racing with Large-Scale Human Data
Despite the availability of international prize-money competitions, scaled vehicles, and simulation environments, research on autonomous racing and the control of sports cars operating close to the limit of handling has been limited by the high costs of vehicle acquisition and management, as well as the limited physics accuracy of open-source simulators. In this paper, we propose a racing simulation platform based on the simulator Assetto Corsa to test, validate, and benchmark autonomous driving algorithms, including reinforcement learning (RL) and classical Model Predictive Control (MPC), in realistic and challenging scenarios. Our contributions include the development of this simulation platform, several state-of-the-art algorithms tailored to the racing environment, and a comprehensive dataset collected from human drivers. Additionally, we evaluate algorithms in the offline RL setting.
Adversarial Counterfactual Environment Model Learning
An accurate environment dynamics model is crucial for various downstream tasks in sequential decision-making, such as counterfactual prediction, off-policy evaluation, and offline reinforcement learning. Currently, these models were learned through empirical risk minimization (ERM) by step-wise fitting of historical transition data. This way was previously believed unreliable over long-horizon rollouts because of the compounding errors, which can lead to uncontrollable inaccuracies in predictions. In this paper, we find that the challenge extends beyond just longterm prediction errors: we reveal that even when planning with one step, learned dynamics models can also perform poorly due to the selection bias of behavior policies during data collection.
OneNet: Enhancing Time Series Forecasting Models under Concept Drift by Online Ensembling
Online updating of time series forecasting models aims to address the concept drifting problem by efficiently updating forecasting models based on streaming data. Many algorithms are designed for online time series forecasting, with some exploiting cross-variable dependency while others assume independence among variables. Given every data assumption has its own pros and cons in online time series modeling, we propose Online ensembling Network (OneNet). It dynamically updates and combines two models, with one focusing on modeling the dependency across the time dimension and the other on cross-variate dependency. Our method incorporates a reinforcement learning-based approach into the traditional online convex programming framework, allowing for the linear combination of the two models with dynamically adjusted weights. OneNet addresses the main shortcoming of classical online learning methods that tend to be slow in adapting to the concept drift. Empirical results show that OneNet reduces online forecasting error by more than 50%compared to the State-Of-The-Art (SOTA) method.