Robust, Efficient, Globally-Optimized Reinforcement Learning with the Parti-Game Algorithm

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 11 (NIPS 1998)

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Authors

Mohammad Al-Ansari, Ronald Williams

Abstract

Parti-game (Moore 1994a; Moore 1994b; Moore and Atkeson 1995) is a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm that has a lot of promise in over(cid:173) coming the curse of dimensionality that can plague RL algorithms when applied to high-dimensional problems. In this paper we introduce mod(cid:173) ifications to the algorithm that further improve its performance and ro(cid:173) bustness. In addition, while parti-game solutions can be improved locally by standard local path-improvement techniques, we introduce an add-on algorithm in the same spirit as parti-game that instead tries to improve solutions in a non-local manner.