## Making Complex Decisions

Earlier, we were concerned with environments with one-shot, episodic decision problems. Sequential decision problems incorporate utilities, uncertainty and sensing. These include searching and planning problems as special cases.

### Markov Decision Process (MDP)

A sequential decision problem for a fully observable, stochastic environment with a Markovian transition model and additive rewards is called a Markov decision process. It consists of a set of states, with initial state $$s_0$$, a set $$ACTIONS(s)$$ of actions in each state, a transition model $$P(s’|s, a)$$, and a reward function $$R(s)$$.

A policy, denoted $$\pi$$, specifies what the agent should do in any state $$s$$. This action is denoted by $$\pi(s)$$. The optimal policy $$\pi^*$$ yields the highest expected utility.

The careful balancing of risk and reward is a characteristic of MDPs that does not arise in deterministic search problems.

### Utilities over time

A finite horizon for decision making means that there is a fixed time $$N$$ after which nothing matters. In these scenarios, the optimal action in a given state could change over time, i.e. the optimal policy is non-stationary.

It turns out that under stationarity, there are only 2 coherent ways to assign utilities to sequences:

$$U_h([s_0, s_1, \dots, s_n]) = R(s_0) + R(s_1) + \dots + R(s_n)$$
discounted rewards
$$U_h([s_0, s_1, \dots, s_n]) = R(s_0) + \gamma \cdot R(s_1) + \dots + \gamma^2 \cdot R(s_n)$$

This discount factor $$\gamma$$ is a number between 0 and 1. Assuming stationarity has several problems. First, if the environment does not contain a terminal state, then utilities of undiscounted rewards go to infinite, and comparing two infinitely state sequences would be impossible. With discounted rewards, the utility of an infinite sequence can be made finite.

However, if the environment contains a terminal state, and the agent is guaranteed to reach a terminal state eventually, then this policy is called a proper policy, and the above issue goes away. Infinite sequences can be compared in terms of the average reward obtained per time step.

### Optimal policies and the utilities of states

First, we can derive the expected utility of executing a policy $$\pi$$ in $$s$$:

$$U^\pi (s) = \mathbb{E} \left[ \sum_{t=0}^\infty \gamma^t R(S_t) \right]$$

where the expectation is with respect to the probability distribution over state sequences. determined by $$s$$ and $$\pi$$. Then π^*(s) = argmax_π U^π (s)*. A consequence of using discounted utilities with infinite horizons is that the optimal policy is independent of the starting state. This allows us to compute the true utility of the state as $$U^{\pi^*} (s)$$. The utility function allows the agent to select actions by using the principle of maximum expected utility from the earlier chapter: $$\pi^*(s) = argmax_{a \in A(s) } \sum_{s^{i}} P(s’ |s, a)U(s’)$$. ### Value Iteration The bellman equation illustrates that the utility of a state is the immediate reward for that state plus the expected discounted utility of the next state: $$U(s) = R(s) + \gamma max_{a \in A(s)} \sum_{s’} P(s’ | s, a)U(s’)$$ If there are $$n$$ possible states, there are $$n$$ Bellman equations to solve. However, these equations are non-linear, and cannot be solved using linear algebra techniques. Value iteration is an algorithm that is guaranteed to converge to an equilibrium. The basic idea is to start with arbitrary initial values for the utilities. We compute the right hand side of the equation, and update the utility on the left hand side of the equation. function VALUE-ITERATION(mdp, e) returns a utility function inputs: mdp, an MDP with states S, actions A(s), transition model P(s' | s, a), discount \gamma e, the maximium error allowed in the utility of any state locals: U, U', vectors of utilities for states in S, initially zero \delta, the maximum change in utility for any state repeat U <- U'; \delta <- 0 for each state s in S do U'[s] <- R(s) + \gamma max_{a \in A(s)} \sum_{s'} P(s' | s, a) U[s'] if |U'[s] - U[s] | > \delta then \delta <- |U'[s] - U[s]| until \delta < e(1-\gamma) / \gamma return U  ### Policy Iteration We have already observed that it is possible to get an optimal policy, without having accurate utility function estimates. The policy iteration algorithm exploits this. The algorithm alternates between 2 steps, beginning at some policy $$\pi_0$$: 1. Policy evaluation: given a policy $$\pi_i$$, calculate $$U_i = U^{\pi_i}$$, the utility of each state if $$\pi_i$$ were to be executed 2. Policy improvement: calculate a new MEU policy $$\pi_{i+1}$$, using one-step look ahead based on $$U_i$$: $$\pi^* (s) = argmax_{a \in A(s)} P(s’ | s, a) U(s’)$$ Policy evaluation is simple, because the policy $$\pi_i$$ specifies the action $$\pi_i(s)$$ in state $$s$$. This means we have a simplified version of the Bellman equation relating the utility of $$s$$ to the utility of its neighbours: $$U(s) = R(s) + \gamma \sum_{s’} P(s’ | s, a)U(s’)$$ These equations are linear and can be quickly solved (in $$O(n^3)$$ time) with linear algebra techniques. We can further speed up this process by performing an approximate policy evaluation. We do this by performing some number of value iteration steps to update the utilities: $$U_{i+1}(s) \leftarrow R(s) + \gamma \sum_{s’}P(s’|s, \pi_i(s))U_i(s’)$$ The resulting algorithm is called modified policy iteration, and is often much more efficient. function POLICY-ITERATION(mdp) returns a policy inputs: mdp, an MDP locals: U, vector of utilities for states in S \pi, a policy vector indexed by state, initially random repeat U <- POLICY-EVALUATION(\pi, U, mdp) unchanged? <- true for each state s in S do if max_{a \in A(s)} \sum_{s'} P(s'|s, a) U[s'] > \sum_{s'} P(s'|s, \pi[s])U[s'] then do \pi[s] \leftarrow argmax_{a \in A(s)} P(s'|s, a) U[s'] unchanged <- false until unchanged? return \pi  Asynchronous policy iteration involves picking a subset of states and applying either kind of updating (policy improvement or simplified value iteration) on that subset. Given certain conditions, this is guaranteed to converge, and the freedom to choose any subset of states gives us a means to design efficient heuristic algorithms. ### Summary Problem Bellman Equation Algorithm Prediction Bellman Expectation Equation Iterative Policy Evaluation Control Bellman Expectation Equation + Greedy Policy Improvement Policy Iteration Control Bellman Optimality Equation Value Iteration ### Partially Observable MDPs (POMDPs) The assumption of full observability, accompanied with the Markov assumption for the transition model means that the optimal policy depends only on the current state. When the environment is partially observable, the agent does not know which state it is in. The agent then cannot execute $$\pi(s)$$. The utility of a state $$s$$ and the optimal action in $$s$$ does not only depend on $$s$$, but also how much the agent knows when it is in $$s$$. In addition to the elements of the MDP – the transition model $$P(s’|s, a)$$, actions $$A(s)$$, and reward function $$R(s)$$, it also has a sensor model $$P(e|s)$$. The sensor model specifies the probability of perceiving evidence $$e$$ in state $$s$$. For example, a sensor might measure the number of adjacent walls. A noisy sensor might return the wrong value with some probability. Belief states are the set of actual states the agent might be in. In POMDPs, these belief states are probability distributions over all possible states. The agent can calculate its current belief state as the conditional probability distribution over the actual states given the sequences of percepts and actions so far. If the previous belief state is $$b(s)$$, and the agent performs some action $$a$$ and perceives evidence $$e$$, then the new belief state is given by: $$b’(s’) = \alpha P(e | s’) \sum_s P(s’ | s, a) b(s)$$ where $$\alpha$$ is a normalizing constant that makes the belief state sum to 1. The optimal action in a POMDP depends only on the agent’s belief state. The optimal policy can be described by a mapping $$\pi^* (b)$$ from belief states to actions. The decision cycle of a POMDP can be broken down into 3 steps: 1. Given the current belief state $$b$$, execute the action $$a = \pi^* (b)$$. 2. Receive percept $$e$$. 3. Update the belief state to $$b’$$ and repeat. If we knew the action and the subsequent percept, then the update to the belief state would be a deterministic one, following the update equation. The subsequent percept is not yet known, so the agent will arrive in one of several possible belief states. The probability of perceiving $$e$$, given that $$a$$ is was the action taken from belief state $$b$$, is given by: \begin{align} P(e | a,b) &= \sum_{s’} P(e | a, s’, b) P(s’ | a, b) \\ &= \sum_{s’} P(e|s’)P(s’|a, b) \\ &= \sum_{s’} P(e | s’)\sum_{s’}P(s’|s, a)b(s) \end{align} \begin{align} P(b’ | a, b) &= \sum_eP(b’ | e, a, b) P(e | a, b) \\ &= \sum_eP(b’ | e, a, b)\sum_{s’} P(e|s’)\sum_{s’} P(s’ | s, a)b(s) \end{align} Where $$P(b’ | e, a, b) = 1$$ if $$b’ = FORWARD(b,a,e)$$ and $$0$$ otherwise. Because POMDPs have continuous state space, new algorithms for computing or approximating the optimal policies for MDPs do not apply here. ### Value iteration for POMDPs The value iteration algorithm for the MDP computed one utility value for each state. With infinitely many belief states, we need to be more creative. Consider conditional plans, and how the expected utility of executing a fixed conditional plan varies with the initial belief state. 1. Let the utility of executing a fixed conditional plan $$p$$ starting in physical state $$s$$ be $$\alpha_p(s)$$. Then the expected utility of executing $$p$$ in belief state $$b$$ is $$\sum_s b(s) \alpha_p (s)$$ Hence the expected utility of a fixed conditional plan varies linearly with $$b$$. 2. At any given belief state $$b$$, the optimal policy will choose to execute the conditional plan with the highest expected utility, and the expected utility is just the utility of that conditional plan: $$U(b) = U^{\pi^*}(b) = max_{p} b \cdot \alpha_p$$ If the optimal policy $$\pi^*$$ chooses to execute $$p$$ starting at $$b$$, then it is reasonable to expect that it might choose to execute $$p$$ in belief states that are close to $$b$$. From these 2 observations, we see that the utility function $$U(b)$$ on belief states, being the maximum of a collection of hyperplanes, will be piecewise linear and convex. Let $$p$$ be a depth-d conditional plan whose initial action is $$a$$ and whose depth-d-1 subplan for percept $$e$$ is $$p.e$$, then $$\alpha_p{s} = R(s) + \gamma \left( \sum_{s’} P(s’ | s,a)\sum_e P(e|s’)\alpha_{p.e}(s’) \right)$$ This recursion gives rise to a value iteration algorithm: function POMDP-VALUE-ITERATION returns a utility function inputs: pomdp e, the maximum error allowed for utility locals: U, U' sets of plans p U' <- set containing the empty plan [], with \alpha_[](s) = R(s) repeat U <- U' U' <- set of all plans computed with above equation U' <- REMOVE-DOMINATED-PLANS(U') until MAX-DIFFERENCE(U, U') < e(1-\gamma) / \gamma return U  The algorithm’s complexity is dominated by the number of plans generated: given $$|A|$$ possible actions and $$|E|$$ possible observations, there are $$|A|^{O(|E|^{d-1})}$$ distinct depth-d plans, making the algorithm hopelessly inefficient for larger problems. ### TODO Online agents for POMDPs We are still far from making anything that even resembles a strong AI. What makes MCTS different from Minimax? Minimax can take an impractical amount of time to do a full search of the game tree, especially games with high branching factor. Some games are highly open-ended, with game trees that are highly complex. This makes it difficult to write an evaluation function for each state. MCTS is a technique that will give good results for games, and is domain-independent. UCB1 constructs statistical confidence intervals: $$\bar{x_i} \pm \sqrt{\frac{2 \ln n}{n_i}}$$ where: • $$\bar{x_i}$$ is the mean payout for action $$i$$ • $$n_i$$ is the number of simulations of action $$i$$ • $$n$$ is the total number of plays The strategy is to pick the action with the highest upper bound each time. How could an AI possibly “plan” ahead when there are so many potential moves and counter moves in Go? MCTS builds a statistics tree (detailing value of nodes) that partially maps onto the entire tree. Statistics tree guides the AI. MCTS constructs the statistics tree at the starting point. Selection All child nodes have now been visited at least once. Now AI can select the best child node. • based on how good the statistics are • how much the child node has been “ignored” Expansion Add a new node that the AI will investigate Simulation starting from position represented by left child node, make random moves repeatedly until the game is won or lost Update Depending on win or loss, update left child node in stats tree with relevant stats The parent nodes inherit statistics from child nodes. The node with the highest number of simulations will be chosen as the next move. The first phase, selection, lasts until the statistics necessary to treat each position reached as a multi-armed bandit problem is collected. The second phase, expansion, occurs when the algorithm can longer be applied. An unvisited child is randomly chosen, and a new record node is added to the tree of statistics. After expansion, the remainder of the playout is in phase 3, simulation. This is done as a typical monte carlo simulation. When the playout reaches the end, the update phase takes place. All of the positions visited during this playout have their play count and their win count incremented. Some great references for productionized implementations of MCTS include: ## Passive Reinforcement Learning We start with a passive learning agent using a state-based representation in a fully observable environment. In passive learning, the agent’s policy $$\pi$$ is fixed: in state $$s$$, it always executes the action $$\pi(s)$$. Its goal is simply to learn how good the policy is – the utility function $$U^\pi (s)$$. The passive learning task is similar to policy evaluation, but the agent does not know the transition model $$P(s’|s, a)$$ and the reward function $$R(s)$$. The agent executes a number of trials using the policy $$\pi$$, and experiences a sequence of state transitions. At each state its percepts receives the current state and the reward of the state. We write the utility as: $$U^\pi (s) = E\left[\sum_{t=0}^\infty \gamma^t R(S_t) \right]$$ ### Direct Utility Estimation (MC Learning) The main idea of direct utility estimation is that the utility of a state is the expected total reward from that state onward, and each trial provides a sample of this quantity for each state visited. Direct utility estimation reduces the reinforcement learning problem to a supervised inductive learning problem, where each example has the state as input, and the observed reward-to-go as output. However, it misses an important source of information: that the utility of states are not independent. This means it misses many opportunities for learning. For example, if a state has high expected utility, then neighbouring states should also have high expected utility. The utility of each state equals its own reward plus the expected utility of its successor states: i.e. it obeys the Bellman Equation for a fixed policy. We can view directed utility estimation as searching for $$U$$ in a hypothesis space that is much larger than it needs to be, since it includes many functions that violate the Bellman equations. ### Adaptive Dynamic Programming An ADP agent takes advantage of the constraints among the utilities of states by learning the transition model that connects them and solving the corresponding MDP using a dynamic programming method. For a passive learning agent, the task is as simply as plugging in the learnt transition model and the rewards into the Bellman equations to calculate the utility of each state. The task of learning the model is easy, because the environment is fully observable. This means we have a supervised learning task where the input is a state-action pair, and the output is the resulting state. We keep track of how often each action outcome occurs and estimate the transition probability $$P(s’ | s, a)$$ from the frequency with which $$s’$$ is reached when executing $$a$$ in $$s$$. function PASSIVE-ADP_AGENT(percept) returns an action inputs: percept, indicating state s' and reward signal r' persistent: \pi, a fixed policy mdp: MDP with model P, rewards R, and discount \gamma U: a table of utilities, initially empty N_{sa}: a table of frequencies for each state-action pair N_{s'|s,a}: a table of outcome frequencies s, a: the previous state and action if s' is new thenU[s'] <- r'; R[s'] <- r'
if s is not null then
increment N_{sa}[s, a] and N_{s'|s,a}[s', s, a]
for each t such that N_{s'|s, a}[t,s,a] is nonzero do
P(t|s, a) <- N_{s'|s, a}[t,s,a] / N_{sa}[s, a]
U <- POLICY-EVALUATION(\pi, U, mdp)
if s'.TERMINAL? then s,a <- null else s,a <- s', \pi[s']
return a

Code Snippet 1: A passive RL agent based on ADP.

This approach is computationally intractable for large state spaces. In addition, it uses the maximum-likelihood estimation for learning the transition model.

A more nuanced approach would be Bayesian reinforcement learning, which assumes a prior probability $$P(h)$$ for each hypothesis $$h$$ about what the true model is. The posterior probability $$P(h|e)$$ is obtained via Bayes’ rule. Then $$\pi^* = argmax_\pi \sum_h P(h|e) u_h^\pi$$.

Another approach, derived from robust control theory, allows for a set of possible models $$H$$ and defines an optimal robust policy as one that gives the best outcome in the worst case over $$H$$: $$\pi^* = argmax_\pi min_h u_h^\pi$$.

### Temporal-difference Learning

TD learning involves using the observed transitions to adjust the utilities such that the constraint equations are met.

When a transition occurs from state $$s$$ to state $$s’$$, we apply the update rule:

$$U^\pi(s’) \leftarrow U^\pi(s) + \alpha (R(s) + \gamma U^\pi(s’) -U^\pi(s))$$

Where $$\alpha$$ is the learning rate. The difference in utilities gives rise to the name temporal-difference.

function PASSIVE-TD-AGENT(percept) returns an action
inputs: percept, with current state s' and reward r'
persistent: \pi, a fixed policy
U, a table of utilities, initially empty
N_s, a table of frequencies
s, a, r, the previous state, action and reward

if s' is new then U[s'] <- r'
if s is not null then
increment N_s[s]
U[s] <- U[s] + \alpha N_s[s] (r + \gamma U[s'] - U[s])
if s'.TERMINAL? then s, a r <- null else s,a,r <- s', \pi[s'], r'
return a


TD learning learns slower than ADP and shows much higher variability, but is simpler and requires less computation. TD learning does not need a transition model to perform updates.

ADP and TD are closely related. Both try to make local adjustments to the utility estimates in order to make each state “agree” with its successors. However, TD adjusts a state to agree with its observed successor, while ADP adjusts the state to agree with all of the successors that might occur, weighted by their probabilities.

ADP can be made more efficient by approximating the algorithms for value or policy iteration. For example, the prioritized sweeping heuristic prefers adjustments to states that have undergone a large adjustment in their own utility schemes. This enables them to handle state spaces that are far too large for a full ADP. An approximation algorithm can use a minimum adjustment size that decreases as the environment model becomes more accurate, eliminating very long value iterations that occur early in learning due to large changes in the model.

## Active Reinforcement Learning

A passive learning agent has a fixed policy that determines its behaviour. An active agent must learn what actions to take.

First, the agent will need to learn a complete model with outcome probabilities for all actions, rather than the model for the fixed policy. The learning mechanism for the passive ADP agent will work for this

Next, the agent has a choice of actions. The utilities it learns are defined by the optimal policy, governed by the Bellman equations. Having obtained a utility function for the given model, the agent can extract an optimal action by one-step look-ahead to maximise the expected utility.

### Potential Pitfalls

A greedy agent, that picks the best action given the learned model, very seldom converges to the optimal policy for the environment and sometimes converges to horrible policies.

This is because the learned model is not the same as the true environment. What is optimal in the learned model might not be optimal in the true environment.

An agent therefore has to make a tradeoff between exploitation to maximise its reward, and exploration to maximise its long-term well-being. The question on whether there is an optimal exploration policy is a subfield of statistical decision theory called the bandit problem.

An agent has to be greedy in the limit of infinite exploration, or GLIE. This is the scenario where the learned model is the true model. There are several GLIE schemes, one of the simplest is to have the agent choose a random action a fraction $$\frac{1}{t}$$ of the time and to follow the greedy policy otherwise. This can be extremely slow to converge.

A more sensible approach is to assign some eight to actions that the agent has not tried very often,while tending to avoid actions that are believed to be of low utility. This can be achieved by altering the constraint equation to assign higher utility estimates to unexplored state-action pairs.

$$U^+(s) \leftarrow R(s) + \gamma max_{a} f\left( \sum_{s’} P(s’ | s, a) U^+(s), N(s, a) \right)$$

$$f(u, n)$$ is called the exploration function. It determines how greed is traded off against curiosity. The function should be increasing in $$u$$ and decreasing in $$n$$.

### Learning an action-utility function

An active TD agent is no longer equipped with a fixed policy, so if it learns a utility function $$U$$, it will need to learn a model in order to be able choose an action based on $$U$$ via one-step look-ahead. The update rule for TD remains unchanged. IT can be shown that the TD algorithm will converge to the same values as ADP as the number of training sequences tends to infinity.

### Q-learning

Q-learning learns an action-utility representation instead of learning utilities. We will use the notation $$Q(s,a)$$ to denote the value of doing action $$a$$ in state $$s$$.

$$U = max_a Q(s, a)$$

A TD agent that learns a Q-function does not need a model of the form $$P(s’ | s, a)$$, either for learning or for action selection. Q-learning is hence called a model-free method. We can write a constraint equation as follows:

$$Q(s,a) = R(s) + \gamma \sum_{s’} P(s’ | s, a) max_{a’} Q(s’, a’)$$

However, this equation requires a model to be learnt, since it depends on $$P(s’ | s, a)$$. The TD approach requires no model of state transitions.

The updated equation for TD Q-learning is:

$$Q(s, a) \leftarrow Q(s, a) + \alpha (R(s) + \gamma max_{a’} Q(s’, a’) - Q(s,a))$$

which is calculated whenever action $$a$$ is executed in state $$s$$ leading to state $$s’$$.

Q-learning has a close relative called SARSA (State-Action-Reward-State-Action). The update rule for SARSA is as follows:

$$Q(s, a) \leftarrow Q(s, a) + \alpha (R(s) + \gamma Q(s’, a’) - Q(s, a))$$

where $$a’$$ is the action actually taken in state $$s’$$. The rule is applied at the end of each $$s, a, r, s’, a’$$ quintuplet, hence the name.

Whereas Q-learning backs up the best Q-value from the state reached in the observed transition, SARSA waits until an action is actually taken and backs up the Q-value for that action. For a greedy agent that always takes the action with best Q-value, the two algorithms are identical. When exploration is happening, they differ significanty.

Because Q-learning uses the best Q-value, it pays no attention to the actual policy being followed - it is an off-policy learning algorithm. However, SARSA is an on-policy algorithm.

Q-learning is more flexible in the sense that a Q-learning agent can learn how to behave well even when guided by a random or adversarial exploration policy. On the other hand, SARSA is more realistic: for example if the overall policy is even partly controlled by other agents, it is better to learn a Q-function for what will actually happen rather than what the agent would like to happen.

## Deep Reinforcement Learning

### Actor Critic

Batch actor-critic algorithm:

1. sample $$\left\{ s_i, a_i \right\}$$ from $$\pi_\theta (a|s)$$ (run it on the robot)
2. fit $$\hat{V}_\phi^\pi (s)$$ to sample reward sums
3. evaluate $$\hat{A}^\pi (s_i, a_i) = r(s_i, a_i) + \hat{V}_\phi^\pi(s_i’) - \hat{V}_\phi^\pi (s_i)$$
4. $$\nabla_\theta J(\theta) \approx \sum_i \nabla_\theta \log \pi_\theta(a_i|s_i) \hat{A}^\pi (s_i|a_i)$$
5. $$\theta \leftarrow \theta + \alpha \nabla_\theta J(\theta)$$

### Deep RL with Q-functions

• What happens if we Just use a critic without an actor?
• Extracting a policy from a value function
• Q-learning algorithm
• Extension to Q-learning algorithms

#### Instabilities in Q-Learning

1. Correlations are present in the sequence of observations
2. Small updates to $$Q$$ may significantly change the policy and therefore change the data distribution
3. Correlations between the action-values $$Q$$ and the target values $$r + \gamma \mathrm{max}_{a’}Q(s’, a’)$$.

Full fitted Q-iteration algorithm:

1. collect dataset $$\left\{ (s_i, a_i, s_i’, r_i)\right\}$$ using some policy
2. set $$y_i \leftarrow r(s_i, a_i) + \gamma \mathrm{max}_{a_i’} Q_\phi(s_i’, a_i’)$$
3. set $$\phi \leftarrow \mathrm{argmin}_\phi \frac{1}{2} \sum_i \lVert Q_\phi (s_i, a_i) - y_i \rVert ^2$$

Online Q-iteration algorithm:

1. take some action $$a_i$$ and observe $$(s_i, a_i, s_i’, r_i)$$
2. $$y_i = r(s_i, a_i) + \gamma \mathrm{max}_{a’}Q_\phi(s_i’, a_i’)$$
3. $$\phi \leftarrow \phi - \alpha \frac{dQ_\phi}{d\phi} (s_i, a_i) (Q_\phi (s_i, a_i) - y_i)$$

Q-learning is not gradient descent, and does not converge in general, because there are no gradients through target value.

### Deep Q-network (DQN)

DQN (Mnih {\it et al.}, 2015) aims to improve the stability of Q-learning by introducing 2 mechanisms: experience replay, and a periodically updated target.

#### Experience Replay

This idea is first proposed in (Mnih {\it et al.}, 2015).

All episodic steps $$e_t = (S_t, A_t, R_t, S_{t+1})$$ are stored in a replay buffer $$D_t = \left\{e_1, \dots, e_t\right\}$$. $$D_t$$ has experience tuples over many episodes. During Q-learning updates, samples are drawn at random from the replay buffer. This allows for multiple reuse of each episode, improving data efficiency, and smooths changes in the data distribution.

Is uniform sampling from the replay buffer the best approach? It is expected that some episodes may provide higher expected learning progress, and prioritizing these episodes should lead to faster learning. Prioritized experience replay (Schaul {\it et al.}, 2015) uses TD-error as a measure of expected learning progress, correcting for the introduced bias by using importance-sampling weights.

One ability humans have is to learn almost as much from achieving an undesirable outcome as from the desired one. This property is missing from many model-free RL algorithms. Hindsight Experience Replay (HER) (Andrychowicz {\it et al.}, 2017) allows the algorithm to perform this kind of reasoning, and can be combined with any off-policy RL algorithm. This is applicable whenever multiple goals may be achieved. This makes learning more sample efficient, and possible when rewards are sparse.

#### Periodically Updated Target

The Q-function is optimized towards target values that are only periodically updated. The Q-network is cloned, and kept frozen as the optimization target every $$K$$ steps, $$K$$ being a tunable hyperparameter.

The modified loss function looks like this:

$$L(\theta) = \mathcal{E}_{(s,a,r,s’) \sim U(D)}\left[ \left( r + \gamma \mathrm{max}_{a’}Q(s’,a’;\theta^-)-Q(s,a;\theta) \right)^2 \right]$$

where $$U(D)$$ is a uniform distribution over the replay buffer, and $$\theta^-$$ is the parameters of the frozen target Q-network.

# Bibliography

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Mnih, V., Badia, Adria Puigdomenech, Mirza, M., Graves, A., Lillicrap, T. P., Harley, T., Silver, D., …, Asynchronous methods for deep reinforcement learning, CoRR, (), (2016).

Gu, S., Lillicrap, T., Ghahramani, Z., Turner, R. E., & Levine, S., Q-prop: sample-efficient policy gradient with an off-policy critic, CoRR, (), (2016).

Mnih, V., Kavukcuoglu, K., Silver, D., Rusu, A. A., Veness, J., Bellemare, M. G., Graves, A., …, Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning, Nature, 518(7540), 529–533 (2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14236

Schaul, T., Quan, J., Antonoglou, I., & Silver, D., Prioritized Experience Replay, CoRR, (), (2015).

Andrychowicz, M., Wolski, F., Ray, A., Schneider, J., Fong, R., Welinder, P., McGrew, B., …, Hindsight Experience Replay, CoRR, (), (2017).