Title
Adaptive Step-size Policy Gradients with Average Reward Metric
Abstract
In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive step-size approach for policy gradient reinforcement learning. A new metric is defined for policy gradients that measures the effect of changes on average reward with respect to the policy parameters. Since the metric directly measures the effects on the average reward, the resulting policy gradient learning employs an adaptive step-size strategy that can effectively avoid falling into a stagnant phase from the complex structure of the average reward function with respect to the policy parameters. Two algorithms are derived with the metric as variants of ordinary and natural policy gradients. Their properties are compared with previously proposed policy gradients through numerical experiments with simple, but non-trivial, 3-state Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We also show performance improvements over previous methods in on-line learning with more challenging 20-state MDPs.
Year
Venue
Keywords
2010
JMLR Workshop and Conference Proceedings
Policy Gradients,Natural Policy Gradients,Average Reward Metric
DocType
Volume
ISSN
Journal
13
1938-7288
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.36
11
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Takamitsu Matsubara135139.84
Tetsuro Morimura2607.63
Jun Morimoto329624.17