TEA: Trajectory Encoding Augmentation for Robust and Transferable Policies in Offline Reinforcement Learning

In this paper, we investigate offline reinforcement learning (RL) with the goal of training a single robust policy that generalizes effectively across environments with unseen dynamics. We propose a novel approach, Trajectory Encoding Augmentation (TEA), which extends the state space by integrating latent representations of environmental dynamics obtained from sequence encoders, such as AutoEncoders. Our findings show that incorporating these encodings with TEA improves the transferability of a single policy to novel environments with new dynamics, surpassing methods that rely solely on unmodified states. These results indicate that TEA captures critical, environment-specific characteristics, enabling RL agents to generalize effectively across dynamic conditions.

Neural-ANOVA: Model Decomposition for Interpretable Machine Learning

The analysis of variance (ANOVA) decomposition offers a systematic method to understand the interaction effects that contribute to a specific decision output. In this paper we introduce Neural-ANOVA, an approach to decompose neural networks into glassbox models using the ANOVA decomposition. Our approach formulates a learning problem, which enables rapid and closed-form evaluation of integrals over subspaces that appear in the calculation of the ANOVA decomposition. Finally, we conduct numerical experiments to illustrate the advantages of enhanced interpretability and model validation by a decomposition of the learned interaction effects.

Why long model-based rollouts are no reason for bad Q-value estimates

This paper explores the use of model-based offline reinforcement learning with long model rollouts. While some literature criticizes this approach due to compounding errors, many practitioners have found success in real-world applications. The paper aims to demonstrate that long rollouts do not necessarily result in exponentially growing errors and can actually produce better Q-value estimates than model-free methods. These findings can potentially enhance reinforcement learning techniques.

Model-based Offline Quantum Reinforcement Learning

This paper presents the first algorithm for model-based offline quantum reinforcement learning and demonstrates its functionality on the cart-pole benchmark. The model and the policy to be optimized are each implemented as variational quantum circuits. The model is trained by gradient descent to fit a pre-recorded data set. The policy is optimized with a gradient-free optimization scheme using the return estimate given by the model as the fitness function. This model-based approach allows, in principle, full realization on a quantum computer during the optimization phase and gives hope that a quantum advantage can be achieved as soon as sufficiently powerful quantum computers are available.

Learning Control Policies for Variable Objectives from Offline Data

Offline reinforcement learning provides a viable approach to obtain advanced control strategies for dynamical systems, in particular when direct interaction with the environment is not available. In this paper, we introduce a conceptual extension for model-based policy search methods, called variable objective policy (VOP). With this approach, policies are trained to generalize efficiently over a variety of objectives, which parameterize the reward function. We demonstrate that by altering the objectives passed as input to the policy, users gain the freedom to adjust its behavior or re-balance optimization targets at runtime, without need for collecting additional observation batches or re-training.

Automatic Trade-off Adaptation in Offline RL

Recently, offline RL algorithms have been proposed that remain adaptive at runtime. For example, the LION algorithm \cite{lion} provides the user with an interface to set the trade-off between behavior cloning and optimality w.r.t. the estimated return at runtime. Experts can then use this interface to adapt the policy behavior according to their preferences and find a good trade-off between conservatism and performance optimization. Since expert time is precious, we extend the methodology with an autopilot that automatically finds the correct parameterization of the trade-off, yielding a new algorithm which we term AutoLION.

Safe Policy Improvement Approaches and their Limitations

Safe Policy Improvement (SPI) is an important technique for offline reinforcement learning in safety critical applications as it improves the behavior policy with a high probability. We classify various SPI approaches from the literature into two groups, based on how they utilize the uncertainty of state-action pairs. Focusing on the Soft-SPIBB (Safe Policy Improvement with Soft Baseline Bootstrapping) algorithms, we show that their claim of being provably safe does not hold. Based on this finding, we develop adaptations, the Adv-Soft-SPIBB algorithms, and show that they are provably safe. A heuristic adaptation, Lower-Approx-Soft-SPIBB, yields the best performance among all SPIBB algorithms in extensive experiments on two benchmarks. We also check the safety guarantees of the provably safe algorithms and show that huge amounts of data are necessary such that the safety bounds become useful in practice.

Quantum Policy Iteration via Amplitude Estimation and Grover Search -- Towards Quantum Advantage for Reinforcement Learning

We present a full implementation and simulation of a novel quantum reinforcement learning (RL) method and mathematically prove a quantum advantage. Our approach shows in detail how to combine amplitude estimation and Grover search into a policy evaluation and improvement scheme. We first develop quantum policy evaluation (QPE) which is quadratically more efficient compared to an analogous classical Monte Carlo estimation and is based on a quantum mechanical realization of a finite Markov decision process (MDP). Building on QPE, we derive a quantum policy iteration that repeatedly improves an initial policy using Grover search until the optimum is reached. Finally, we present an implementation of our algorithm for a two-armed bandit MDP which we then simulate. The results confirm that QPE provides a quantum advantage in RL problems.

User-Interactive Offline Reinforcement Learning

Offline reinforcement learning algorithms still lack trust in practice due to the risk that the learned policy performs worse than the original policy that generated the dataset or behaves in an unexpected way that is unfamiliar to the user. At the same time, offline RL algorithms are not able to tune their most important hyperparameter - the proximity of the learned policy to the original policy. We propose an algorithm that allows the user to tune this hyperparameter at runtime, thereby overcoming both of the above mentioned issues simultaneously. This allows users to start with the original behavior and grant successively greater deviation, as well as stopping at any time when the policy deteriorates or the behavior is too far from the familiar one.

Safe Policy Improvement Approaches on Discrete Markov Decision Processes

Safe Policy Improvement (SPI) aims at provable guarantees that a learned policy is at least approximately as good as a given baseline policy. Building on SPI with Soft Baseline Bootstrapping (Soft-SPIBB) by Nadjahi et al., we identify theoretical issues in their approach, provide a corrected theory, and derive a new algorithm that is provably safe on finite Markov Decision Processes (MDP). Additionally, we provide a heuristic algorithm that exhibits the best performance among many state of the art SPI algorithms on two different benchmarks. Furthermore, we introduce a taxonomy of SPI algorithms and empirically show an interesting property of two classes of SPI algorithms: while the mean performance of algorithms that incorporate the uncertainty as a penalty on the action-value is higher, actively restricting the set of policies more consistently produces good policies and is, thus, safer.