arXiv Machine Learning

Gradient-Momentum Coupling: A Parameter-Space Proxy for Learning Progress

The paper introduces Gradient‑Momentum Coupling (GMC), a method that quantifies learning progress by measuring how strongly a sample influences changes in the parameter space, using the normalized absolute product of its gradient and the momentum of previous gradients. GMC filters out noise by accumulating consistent directions of change while canceling random fluctuations, leading to a more uniform prioritization across tasks with varying noise levels and better ranking of learnable tasks by improvement speed. Experiments on MiniGrid MultiRoom tasks show that replacing prediction error with GMC in the Intrinsic Curiosity Module restores exploration capabilities that were lost to unpredictable observations.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 24

VCMM: Variance-Calibrated Momentum for Multimodal Learning

VCMM: Variance-Calibrated Momentum for Multimodal Learning proposes a new optimizer that adapts momentum based on modality-specific gradient dynamics. It estimates minibatch noise and temporal drift online, using a Kalman-inspired controller to set modality-specific momentum and applies bias correction for the first moment. Experiments on four multimodal benchmarks show consistent improvements with modest training overhead.

By Zhongjing Gu, Chenyang Huang, Yufa Feng, Chong He, Qinxu Ding, Yiming Cui
arXiv AI
Jun 6

Retry Policy Gradients in Continuous Action Spaces

arXiv:2606. 05888v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Retry-based objectives such as pass@K and max@K optimize the best return obtained from multiple sampled trajectories, and recent work has shown that they can promote exploration without explicit exploration bonuses.

By Soichiro Nishimori, Paavo Parmas
arXiv AI
Aug 3

RAPiD: Reward-Guided Consistency Distillation of Diffusion Planners for Real-Time Autonomous Driving

arXiv:2602. 07339v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Diffusion-based trajectory planners can model multi-modal driving behavior, but their iterative denoising process introduces a latency bottleneck for real-time closed-loop deployment.

By Ruturaj Reddy, Hrishav Bakul Barua, Junn Yong Loo, Thanh Thi Nguyen, Ganesh Krishnasamy
arXiv AI
Aug 5

Gated Memory Policy: In-Context Memorization and Adaptation

arXiv:2604. 18933v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Robotic manipulation tasks exhibit varying memory requirements, ranging from Markovian tasks that require no memory to non-Markovian tasks that demand in-context memorization of historical information within a single trial or in-context adaptation based on the outcomes of multiple past trials.

By Yihuai Gao, Jeff Jinyun Liu, Shuang Li, Shuran Song
arXiv Machine Learning
4d ago

Space-sampled Value Decay: Forgetting Mechanisms for Non-stationary Reinforcement Learning

The paper introduces Space-sampled Value Decay (SsVD), a forgetting mechanism designed for non-stationary reinforcement learning where the environment can drift at every timestep. SsVD selectively pulls value estimates of randomly chosen state-space elements toward a baseline, discarding outdated information without requiring reset or change-point detection. Integrated into Soft Actor Critic and Deep Q-Networks, SsVD outperforms its base algorithms across six non-stationary environments and can also promote optimism in hard-exploration tasks.

By Felix St\"orck, Philipp Hartmann, Fabian Hinder, Klaus Neumann, Barbara Hammer