Off-Policy Correction for Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient Algorithms via Batch Prioritized Experience Replay

TL;DR

This paper introduces KLPER, a novel batch prioritization method for experience replay in deep deterministic policy gradient algorithms, improving sample efficiency and stability by focusing on recent policy-aligned transitions.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new batch-based prioritization algorithm, KLPER, that enhances off-policy correction and efficiency in deep deterministic policy gradient methods.

Findings

KLPER improves sample efficiency in continuous control tasks.

KLPER enhances policy stability during training.

KLPER achieves better final performance compared to baseline algorithms.

Abstract

The experience replay mechanism allows agents to use the experiences multiple times. In prior works, the sampling probability of the transitions was adjusted according to their importance. Reassigning sampling probabilities for every transition in the replay buffer after each iteration is highly inefficient. Therefore, experience replay prioritization algorithms recalculate the significance of a transition when the corresponding transition is sampled to gain computational efficiency. However, the importance level of the transitions changes dynamically as the policy and the value function of the agent are updated. In addition, experience replay stores the transitions are generated by the previous policies of the agent that may significantly deviate from the most recent policy of the agent. Higher deviation from the most recent policy of the agent leads to more off-policy updates, which is detrimental for the agent. In this paper, we develop a novel algorithm, Batch Prioritizing Experience Replay via KL Divergence (KLPER), which prioritizes batch of transitions rather than directly prioritizing each transition. Moreover, to reduce the off-policyness of the updates, our algorithm selects one batch among a certain number of batches and forces the agent to learn through the batch that is most likely generated by the most recent policy of the agent. We combine our algorithm with Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient and Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient and evaluate it on various continuous control tasks. KLPER provides promising improvements for deep deterministic continuous control algorithms in terms of sample efficiency, final performance, and stability of the policy during the training.