A Primal-Dual-Critic Algorithm for Offline Constrained Reinforcement Learning

Offline constrained reinforcement learning (RL) aims to learn a policy that maximizes the expected cumulative reward subject to constraints on expected value of cost functions using an existing dataset. In this paper, we propose Primal-Dual-Critic Algorithm (PDCA), a novel algorithm for offline constrained RL with general function approximation. PDCA runs a primal-dual algorithm on the Lagrangian function estimated by critics. The primal player employs a no-regret policy optimization oracle to maximize the Lagrangian estimate given any choices of the critics and the dual player. The dual player employs a no-regret online linear optimization oracle to minimize the Lagrangian estimate given any choices of the critics and the primal player. We show that PDCA can successfully find a near saddle point of the Lagrangian, which is nearly optimal for the constrained RL problem. Unlike previous work that requires concentrability and strong Bellman completeness assumptions, PDCA only requires concentrability and value function/marginalized importance weight realizability assumptions.