Evo-RL: Evolutionary-Driven Reinforcement Learning

作     者：Hallawa, Ahmed Born, Thorsten Schmeink, Anke Dartmann, Guido Peine, Arne Martin, Lukas Iacca, Giovanni Eiben, A.E. Ascheid, Gerd 

作者机构：Integrated Signal Processing Systems RWTH Aachen University Department of Intensive Care and Intermediate Care University Hospital RWTH Aachen Research Area Information Theory and Systematic Design of Communication Systems RWTH Aachen University Research Area Distributed Systems Trier University of Applied Sciences Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science University of Trento Computer Science Department Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Netherlands 

出 版 物：《arXiv》 (arXiv)

年 卷 期：2020年

核心收录：

主　　题：Evolutionary algorithms 

摘      要：In this work, we propose a novel approach for reinforcement learning driven by evolutionary computation. Our algorithm, dubbed as Evolutionary-Driven Reinforcement Learning (Evo-RL), embeds the reinforcement learning algorithm in an evolutionary cycle, where we distinctly differentiate between purely evolvable (instinctive) behaviour versus purely learnable behaviour. Furthermore, we propose that this distinction is decided by the evolutionary process, thus allowing Evo-RL to be adaptive to different environments. In addition, Evo-RL facilitates learning on environments with rewardless states, which makes it more suited for real-world problems with incomplete information. To show that Evo-RL leads to state-of-the-art performance, we present the performance of different state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms when operating within Evo-RL and compare it with the case when these same algorithms are executed independently. Results show that reinforcement learning algorithms embedded within our Evo-RL approach significantly outperform the stand-alone versions of the same RL algorithms on OpenAI Gym control problems with rewardless states constrained by the same computational budget. Copyright © 2020, The Authors. All rights reserved.