IQL achieves policy improvement in offline RL by implicitly estimating optimal action values through state-conditional upper expectiles of value functions, without querying Q-functions on out-of-distribution actions.
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Behavior Regularized Offline Reinforcement Learning
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abstract
In reinforcement learning (RL) research, it is common to assume access to direct online interactions with the environment. However in many real-world applications, access to the environment is limited to a fixed offline dataset of logged experience. In such settings, standard RL algorithms have been shown to diverge or otherwise yield poor performance. Accordingly, recent work has suggested a number of remedies to these issues. In this work, we introduce a general framework, behavior regularized actor critic (BRAC), to empirically evaluate recently proposed methods as well as a number of simple baselines across a variety of offline continuous control tasks. Surprisingly, we find that many of the technical complexities introduced in recent methods are unnecessary to achieve strong performance. Additional ablations provide insights into which design choices matter most in the offline RL setting.
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Decision Transformer casts RL as autoregressive sequence modeling conditioned on desired returns, past states and actions, matching or exceeding offline RL baselines on Atari, Gym and Key-to-Door tasks.
D4RL supplies new offline RL benchmarks and datasets from expert and mixed sources to expose weaknesses in existing algorithms and standardize evaluation.
TCE bridges domain gaps in offline RL by selectively using source data or generating target-aligned transitions via a dual score-based model, outperforming baselines in experiments.
Flow map policies enable fast one-step inference for flow-based RL policies, and FMQ provides an optimal closed-form Q-guided target for offline-to-online adaptation under trust-region constraints, achieving SOTA performance.
ZALT learns latent hub states and hub-to-hub dynamics from demonstrations to plan zero-shot solutions for unseen start-goal tasks, achieving 55% success in a 3D maze versus 6% for baselines.
AstroAlertBench evaluates multimodal LLMs on astronomical classification accuracy, reasoning, and honesty using real ZTF alerts, revealing that high accuracy often diverges from self-assessed reasoning quality.
DOSER detects OOD actions via diffusion-model denoising error and applies selective regularization based on predicted transitions, proving gamma-contraction with performance bounds and outperforming priors on offline RL benchmarks.
Proposes OPMD algorithm achieving accelerated O(1/n) rates for offline Nash equilibrium learning in alpha-potential games via reference-anchored data coverage.
KL regularization enables pessimism-free offline learning in general-sum games, recovering regularized Nash equilibria at accelerated rate O(1/n) via GANE and converging to coarse correlated equilibria at standard rate O(1/sqrt(n)+1/T) via GAMD.
Diffusion-QL uses conditional diffusion models as expressive policies in offline RL by coupling behavior cloning with Q-value maximization, achieving SOTA on most D4RL tasks.
TMRL bridges behavioral cloning pretraining and RL finetuning via diffusion noise and timestep modulation to enable controlled exploration, improving sample efficiency and enabling real-world robot training in under one hour.
DFP is a one-step generative policy using Wasserstein gradient flow on a drifting model backbone, with a top-K behavior cloning surrogate, that reaches SOTA on Robomimic and OGBench manipulation tasks.
Offline KL-regularized MABs require sample complexity scaling as O(η S A C^π*/ε) for large regularization and Ω(S A C^π*/ε²) for small regularization, with matching lower bounds across the full range.
A new adaptive variance estimator for relative sparsity coefficients is introduced that fully utilizes the prior asymptotic normality theorem and incorporates variable selection effects.
AdamO modifies Adam with an orthogonality correction to ensure the spectral radius of the TD update operator stays below one, providing a theoretical stability guarantee for offline RL.
QHyer replaces return-to-go with a state-conditioned Q-estimator and adds a gated hybrid attention-mamba backbone to achieve state-of-the-art performance in offline goal-conditioned RL on both Markovian and non-Markovian datasets.
A framework decouples failure data for value estimation and success data for policy learning in offline RL to reduce collisions in robot navigation while maintaining success rates.
Hypernetworks map a forcing parameter directly to policy weights in an RL framework, enabling unified stabilization of the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation across regimes with KAN architectures showing strongest extrapolation.
Weighted BC estimates trajectory density ratios from a clean reference set via binary discrimination and reweights the BC loss to converge to the clean expert policy with finite-sample bounds independent of contamination rate.
IDQL generalizes IQL into an actor-critic framework and uses diffusion policies for robust policy extraction, outperforming prior offline RL methods.
Return-conditional diffusion models for policies outperform offline RL on benchmarks by circumventing dynamic programming and enable constraint or skill composition.
A comprehensive benchmark study of offline imitation learning methods on multi-stage robot manipulation tasks identifies key sensitivities to algorithm design, data quality, and stopping criteria while releasing all datasets and code.
COOPO is a cyclic offline-online RL algorithm that repeatedly anchors the policy to a dataset via KL-regularized updates then fine-tunes online, claiming better sample efficiency and monotonic improvement under coverage assumptions.
citing papers explorer
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Offline Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Q-Learning
IQL achieves policy improvement in offline RL by implicitly estimating optimal action values through state-conditional upper expectiles of value functions, without querying Q-functions on out-of-distribution actions.
-
Decision Transformer: Reinforcement Learning via Sequence Modeling
Decision Transformer casts RL as autoregressive sequence modeling conditioned on desired returns, past states and actions, matching or exceeding offline RL baselines on Atari, Gym and Key-to-Door tasks.
-
D4RL: Datasets for Deep Data-Driven Reinforcement Learning
D4RL supplies new offline RL benchmarks and datasets from expert and mixed sources to expose weaknesses in existing algorithms and standardize evaluation.
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Bridging Domain Gaps with Target-Aligned Generation for Offline Reinforcement Learning
TCE bridges domain gaps in offline RL by selectively using source data or generating target-aligned transitions via a dual score-based model, outperforming baselines in experiments.
-
Aligning Flow Map Policies with Optimal Q-Guidance
Flow map policies enable fast one-step inference for flow-based RL policies, and FMQ provides an optimal closed-form Q-guided target for offline-to-online adaptation under trust-region constraints, achieving SOTA performance.
-
Zero-shot Imitation Learning by Latent Topology Mapping
ZALT learns latent hub states and hub-to-hub dynamics from demonstrations to plan zero-shot solutions for unseen start-goal tasks, achieving 55% success in a 3D maze versus 6% for baselines.
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AstroAlertBench: Evaluating the Accuracy, Reasoning, and Honesty of Multimodal LLMs in Astronomical Classification
AstroAlertBench evaluates multimodal LLMs on astronomical classification accuracy, reasoning, and honesty using real ZTF alerts, revealing that high accuracy often diverges from self-assessed reasoning quality.
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Beyond Penalization: Diffusion-based Out-of-Distribution Detection and Selective Regularization in Offline Reinforcement Learning
DOSER detects OOD actions via diffusion-model denoising error and applies selective regularization based on predicted transitions, proving gamma-contraction with performance bounds and outperforming priors on offline RL benchmarks.
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Fast Rates in $\alpha$-Potential Games via Regularized Mirror Descent
Proposes OPMD algorithm achieving accelerated O(1/n) rates for offline Nash equilibrium learning in alpha-potential games via reference-anchored data coverage.
-
Pessimism-Free Offline Learning in General-Sum Games via KL Regularization
KL regularization enables pessimism-free offline learning in general-sum games, recovering regularized Nash equilibria at accelerated rate O(1/n) via GANE and converging to coarse correlated equilibria at standard rate O(1/sqrt(n)+1/T) via GAMD.
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Diffusion Policies as an Expressive Policy Class for Offline Reinforcement Learning
Diffusion-QL uses conditional diffusion models as expressive policies in offline RL by coupling behavior cloning with Q-value maximization, achieving SOTA on most D4RL tasks.
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TMRL: Diffusion Timestep-Modulated Pretraining Enables Exploration for Efficient Policy Finetuning
TMRL bridges behavioral cloning pretraining and RL finetuning via diffusion noise and timestep modulation to enable controlled exploration, improving sample efficiency and enabling real-world robot training in under one hour.
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Drifting Field Policy: A One-Step Generative Policy via Wasserstein Gradient Flow
DFP is a one-step generative policy using Wasserstein gradient flow on a drifting model backbone, with a top-K behavior cloning surrogate, that reaches SOTA on Robomimic and OGBench manipulation tasks.
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On the Optimal Sample Complexity of Offline Multi-Armed Bandits with KL Regularization
Offline KL-regularized MABs require sample complexity scaling as O(η S A C^π*/ε) for large regularization and Ω(S A C^π*/ε²) for small regularization, with matching lower bounds across the full range.
-
An adaptive variance estimator for relative sparsity
A new adaptive variance estimator for relative sparsity coefficients is introduced that fully utilizes the prior asymptotic normality theorem and incorporates variable selection effects.
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AdamO: A Collapse-Suppressed Optimizer for Offline RL
AdamO modifies Adam with an orthogonality correction to ensure the spectral radius of the TD update operator stays below one, providing a theoretical stability guarantee for offline RL.
-
QHyer: Q-conditioned Hybrid Attention-mamba Transformer for Offline Goal-conditioned RL
QHyer replaces return-to-go with a state-conditioned Q-estimator and adds a gated hybrid attention-mamba backbone to achieve state-of-the-art performance in offline goal-conditioned RL on both Markovian and non-Markovian datasets.
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Learning from Demonstration with Failure Awareness for Safe Robot Navigation
A framework decouples failure data for value estimation and success data for policy learning in offline RL to reduce collisions in robot navigation while maintaining success rates.
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Hyperfastrl: Hypernetwork-based reinforcement learning for unified control of parametric chaotic PDEs
Hypernetworks map a forcing parameter directly to policy weights in an RL framework, enabling unified stabilization of the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation across regimes with KAN architectures showing strongest extrapolation.
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Density-Ratio Weighted Behavioral Cloning: Learning Control Policies from Corrupted Datasets
Weighted BC estimates trajectory density ratios from a clean reference set via binary discrimination and reweights the BC loss to converge to the clean expert policy with finite-sample bounds independent of contamination rate.
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IDQL: Implicit Q-Learning as an Actor-Critic Method with Diffusion Policies
IDQL generalizes IQL into an actor-critic framework and uses diffusion policies for robust policy extraction, outperforming prior offline RL methods.
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Is Conditional Generative Modeling all you need for Decision-Making?
Return-conditional diffusion models for policies outperform offline RL on benchmarks by circumventing dynamic programming and enable constraint or skill composition.
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What Matters in Learning from Offline Human Demonstrations for Robot Manipulation
A comprehensive benchmark study of offline imitation learning methods on multi-stage robot manipulation tasks identifies key sensitivities to algorithm design, data quality, and stopping criteria while releasing all datasets and code.
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COOPO: Cyclic Offline-Online Policy Optimization Algorithm
COOPO is a cyclic offline-online RL algorithm that repeatedly anchors the policy to a dataset via KL-regularized updates then fine-tunes online, claiming better sample efficiency and monotonic improvement under coverage assumptions.
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RankQ: Offline-to-Online Reinforcement Learning via Self-Supervised Action Ranking
RankQ augments temporal-difference Q-learning with a multi-term self-supervised ranking loss to enforce structured action ordering, yielding competitive or better results than prior methods on D4RL and large gains in vision-based robot fine-tuning.
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VIPO: Value Function Inconsistency Penalized Offline Reinforcement Learning
VIPO improves model-based offline RL by minimizing value function inconsistency between direct data estimates and model predictions, achieving SOTA results on D4RL and NeoRL benchmarks.
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A Review of Causal Decision Making
A review that organizes causal decision making into three stages and consolidates methods into an open Python collection.
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Offline Reinforcement Learning: Tutorial, Review, and Perspectives on Open Problems
Offline RL promises to extract high-utility policies from static datasets but faces fundamental challenges that current methods only partially address.
- Q-Flow: Stable and Expressive Reinforcement Learning with Flow-Based Policy
- Towards Efficient and Expressive Offline RL via Flow-Anchored Noise-conditioned Q-Learning