arXiv:2608.20909v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Offline RL methods commonly jointly train the actor and critic, where the critic is used to guide the actor toward higher-value actions. This coupled l...
By Xuyao Lin, Yixiang Shan, Jinru Duan, Tao Yang, Xinyu Zhao, Runyu Lei, Yiming Zhao, Jiaxin Fan, Zongbao Feng, Peng Jia
arXiv:2605. 05481v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We revisit a classic "chicken-and-egg" problem in reinforcement learning: to safely improve a policy, the value function must be accurate on the state-visitation distribution of the updated policy.
By Dillon Sandhu, Ronald Parr
arXiv:2608. 10634v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL), which learns environment dynamics to generate synthetic experience, is a promising approach to sample-efficient decision making.
By Zefeng Liang, Jie Qiao, Ruichu Cai, Weilin Chen, Zhifeng Hao
The paper investigates how reusing past samples can improve the sample efficiency of Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO). Two variants, wPPO-U and wPPO-BH, are introduced within a multiple importance weighting framework, each reusing data from recent iterations while preserving core PPO mechanics. The authors derive theoretical policy improvement bounds for both variants and empirically evaluate their impact on continuous control tasks.
By Alessandro Montenegro, Riccardo Venturelli, Marco Mussi, Matteo Papini, Alberto Maria Metelli
arXiv:2606. 11087v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Expressive continuous control policies, such as diffusion and flow models, form the backbone of recent advances in scaling imitation learning for simulated and real robot control.
By Zhiyuan Zhou, Andy Peng, Charles Xu, Qiyang Li, Tobias Springenberg, Kevin Frans, Sergey Levine
arXiv:2607. 01880v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Value functions are an essential component in actor-critic based deep reinforcement learning (RL).
By Jen-Yen Chang, Takayuki Osa, Tatsuya Harada
arXiv:2602. 05379v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Effective reinforcement learning (RL) for complex stochastic systems requires leveraging historical data to improve sample efficiency and accelerate policy optimization.
By Hua Zheng, Wei Xie, M. Ben Feng, Keilung Choy
arXiv:2603. 09344v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Offline reinforcement learning (RL) enables data-efficient and safe policy learning without online exploration, but its performance often degrades under distribution shift.
By Hongqiang Lin, Zhenghui Fu, Weihao Tang, Pengfei Wang, Yiding Sun, Qixian Huang, Dongxu Zhang
arXiv:2609.40149v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Policy regularization in offline reinforcement learning balances policy improvement against reliance on uncertain value estimates. This balance can dif...
By Seonvin Cho, Soohyun Choi, Songnam Hong
BCPPO is a new variant of Proximal Policy Optimization that uses Bachelier-inspired cost‑prediction networks to generate a smooth penalty based on disagreement among critics. The method keeps temporal‑difference learning unchanged, applies a saturation‑aware controller to manage cost penalties, and deploys only the policy network. Across extensive experiments, BCPPO outperforms comparators in achieving higher mean returns while maintaining lower or comparable CVaR in all tested tasks.
By Dongsheng Hou, Yanqiao Chen, Yuhan Rui
arXiv:2503. 03660v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce a sequence-conditioned critic for Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) that models trajectory context with a lightweight Transformer and trains on aggregated $N$-step targets.
By Dong Tian, Onur Celik, Gerhard Neumann
The paper introduces Bidirectional Behavior Prior Distillation (B2PD), a method that uses action‑value priors to train a conditional variational autoencoder for generating high‑value behavior support. These expert behavior priors are then distilled into the online reinforcement learning agent, reducing inefficient exploration and stabilizing policy updates. Experiments on state‑ and pixel‑based tasks show that B2PD improves sample efficiency while maintaining stable learning dynamics.
By Gong Gao, Xiao Lai, Jiaji Shen, Ning Jia, Xianhui Liu, Weidong Zhao