Reinforcement Learning with Non-Cumulative Objective

TL;DR

This paper extends reinforcement learning algorithms to optimize non-cumulative objectives by modifying the Bellman equation, with theoretical guarantees and experimental validation on control and network routing tasks.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized Bellman update for non-cumulative objectives, providing conditions for convergence and demonstrating effectiveness in control and networking applications.

Findings

Generalized Bellman updates can optimize non-cumulative objectives.

Convergence guarantees are established under specific conditions.

Experimental results show improved performance on routing and control tasks.

Abstract

In reinforcement learning, the objective is almost always defined as a \emph{cumulative} function over the rewards along the process. However, there are many optimal control and reinforcement learning problems in various application fields, especially in communications and networking, where the objectives are not naturally expressed as summations of the rewards. In this paper, we recognize the prevalence of non-cumulative objectives in various problems, and propose a modification to existing algorithms for optimizing such objectives. Specifically, we dive into the fundamental building block for many optimal control and reinforcement learning algorithms: the Bellman optimality equation. To optimize a non-cumulative objective, we replace the original summation operation in the Bellman update rule with a generalized operation corresponding to the objective. Furthermore, we provide sufficient conditions on the form of the generalized operation as well as assumptions on the Markov decision process under which the globally optimal convergence of the generalized Bellman updates can be guaranteed. We demonstrate the idea experimentally with the bottleneck objective, i.e., the objectives determined by the minimum reward along the process, on classical optimal control and reinforcement learning tasks, as well as on two network routing problems on maximizing the flow rates.