The paper introduces Multi-step Proximal Policy Improvement (MPI), a method that refines offline reinforcement learning policies through sequential re-centered proximal steps. By viewing policies as a probability manifold, MPI interprets a wide range of offline actor objectives as a single proximal policy improvement step and extends this to multiple steps for controlled policy improvement beyond the behavior distribution. Experiments on D4RL benchmarks demonstrate that a few MPI refinements enhance strong offline baselines such as TD3+BC, ReBRAC, and IQL, while diagnostics clarify the benefits of re-centered refinement over fixed-objective scheduling and highlight critic error limitations.
By Soohyun Choi, Seonvin Cho, Songnam Hong
arXiv:2609. 03842v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Behavior regularization in offline reinforcement learning limits the exploitation of critic errors, but strong anchoring can also restrict policy improvement.
By Soohyun Choi, Seonvin Cho, Songnam Hong
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:2607. 21302v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Behavior prior reinforcement learning (BPRL) has emerged as a promising paradigm to improve sample efficiency in online reinforcement learning (RL) by leveraging policy priors derived from offline demonstrations.
By Gong Gao, Weidong Zhao, Xianhui Liu, Ning Jia
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
arXiv:2609.21108v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has achieved strong performance across a wide range of continuous-control problems. These continuous-control policies...
By Sachini Weerasekara, Sagar Kamarthi, Jacqueline Isaacs
arXiv:2606. 09115v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Offline reinforcement learning (RL) offers a path to policy improvement from logged data alone, using historical returns or other measurable outcomes as world feedback.
By Lena Krieger, Xuan Zhao, Zhuo Cao, Qin Wang, Hanno Scharr, Ira Assent
arXiv:2107. 08183v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: High-dimensional state and action spaces combined with sparse reward structures in reinforcement learning (RL) environments typically require advanced control architectures.
By JaeYoon Kim, Junyu Xuan, Christy Liang, Farookh Hussain
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
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:2609.35880v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Offline reinforcement learning (RL) has traditionally focused on learning policies for direct deployment under conservative objectives, where uncertain...
By Tianwei Ni, Vineet Jain, Akash Karthikeyan, Pierre-Luc Bacon
arXiv:2406.03894v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is a popular model-free reinforcement learning algorithm, esteemed for its simplicity and efficacy. However, due...
By Yaozhong Gan, Renye Yan, Xiaoyang Tan, Zhe Wu, Junliang Xing