Key Papers in Deep RL

Key Papers in Deep RL

What follows is a list of papers in deep RL that are worth reading. This is far from comprehensive, but should provide a useful starting point for someone looking to do research in the field.

Table of Contents

• Key Papers in Deep RL
  • 1. Model-Free RL
  • 2. Exploration
  • 3. Transfer and Multitask RL
  • 4. Hierarchy
  • 5. Memory
  • 6. Model-Based RL
  • 7. Meta-RL
  • 8. Scaling RL
  • 9. RL in the Real World
  • 10. Safety
  • 11. Imitation Learning and Inverse Reinforcement Learning
  • 12. Reproducibility, Analysis, and Critique
  • 13. Bonus: Classic Papers in RL Theory or Review

1. Model-Free RL

a. Deep Q-Learning

[1]
Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning, Mnih et al, 2013. Algorithm: DQN.

[2]
Deep Recurrent Q-Learning for Partially Observable MDPs, Hausknecht and Stone, 2015. Algorithm: Deep Recurrent Q-Learning.

[3]
Dueling Network Architectures for Deep Reinforcement Learning, Wang et al, 2015. Algorithm: Dueling DQN.

[4]
Deep Reinforcement Learning with Double Q-learning, Hasselt et al 2015. Algorithm: Double DQN.

[5]
Prioritized Experience Replay, Schaul et al, 2015. Algorithm: Prioritized Experience Replay (PER).

[6]
Rainbow: Combining Improvements in Deep Reinforcement Learning, Hessel et al, 2017. Algorithm: Rainbow DQN.

b. Policy Gradients

[7]
Asynchronous Methods for Deep Reinforcement Learning, Mnih et al, 2016. Algorithm: A3C.

[8]
Trust Region Policy Optimization, Schulman et al, 2015. Algorithm: TRPO.

[9]
High-Dimensional Continuous Control Using Generalized Advantage Estimation, Schulman et al, 2015. Algorithm: GAE.

[10]
Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms, Schulman et al, 2017. Algorithm: PPO-Clip, PPO-Penalty.

[11]
Emergence of Locomotion Behaviours in Rich Environments, Heess et al, 2017. Algorithm: PPO-Penalty.

[12]
Scalable trust-region method for deep reinforcement learning using Kronecker-factored approximation, Wu et al, 2017. Algorithm: ACKTR.

[13]
Sample Efficient Actor-Critic with Experience Replay, Wang et al, 2016. Algorithm: ACER.

[14]
Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actor, Haarnoja et al, 2018. Algorithm: SAC.

c. Deterministic Policy Gradients

[15]
Deterministic Policy Gradient Algorithms, Silver et al, 2014. Algorithm: DPG.

[16]
Continuous Control With Deep Reinforcement Learning, Lillicrap et al, 2015. Algorithm: DDPG.

[17]
Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methods, Fujimoto et al, 2018. Algorithm: TD3.

d. Distributional RL

[18]
A Distributional Perspective on Reinforcement Learning, Bellemare et al, 2017. Algorithm: C51.

[19]
Distributional Reinforcement Learning with Quantile Regression, Dabney et al, 2017. Algorithm: QR-DQN.

[20]
Implicit Quantile Networks for Distributional Reinforcement Learning, Dabney et al, 2018. Algorithm: IQN.

[21]
Dopamine: A Research Framework for Deep Reinforcement Learning, Anonymous, 2018. Contribution: Introduces Dopamine, a code repository containing implementations of DQN, C51, IQN, and Rainbow. Code link.

e. Policy Gradients with Action-Dependent Baselines

[22]
Q-Prop: Sample-Efficient Policy Gradient with An Off-Policy Critic, Gu et al, 2016. Algorithm: Q-Prop.

[23]
Action-depedent Control Variates for Policy Optimization via Stein’s Identity, Liu et al, 2017. Algorithm: Stein Control Variates.

[24]
The Mirage of Action-Dependent Baselines in Reinforcement Learning, Tucker et al, 2018. Contribution: interestingly, critiques and reevaluates claims from earlier papers (including Q-Prop and stein control variates) and finds important methodological errors in them.

f. Path-Consistency Learning

[25]
Bridging the Gap Between Value and Policy Based Reinforcement Learning, Nachum et al, 2017. Algorithm: PCL.

[26]
Trust-PCL: An Off-Policy Trust Region Method for Continuous Control, Nachum et al, 2017. Algorithm: Trust-PCL.

g. Other Directions for Combining Policy-Learning and Q-Learning

[27]
Combining Policy Gradient and Q-learning, O’Donoghue et al, 2016. Algorithm: PGQL.

[28]
The Reactor: A Fast and Sample-Efficient Actor-Critic Agent for Reinforcement Learning, Gruslys et al, 2017. Algorithm: Reactor.

[29]
Interpolated Policy Gradient: Merging On-Policy and Off-Policy Gradient Estimation for Deep Reinforcement Learning, Gu et al, 2017. Algorithm: IPG.

[30]
Equivalence Between Policy Gradients and Soft Q-Learning, Schulman et al, 2017. Contribution: Reveals a theoretical link between these two families of RL algorithms.

h. Evolutionary Algorithms

[31]
Evolution Strategies as a Scalable Alternative to Reinforcement Learning, Salimans et al, 2017. Algorithm: ES.

2. Exploration

a. Intrinsic Motivation

[32]
VIME: Variational Information Maximizing Exploration, Houthooft et al, 2016. Algorithm: VIME.

[33]
Unifying Count-Based Exploration and Intrinsic Motivation, Bellemare et al, 2016. Algorithm: CTS-based Pseudocounts.

[34]
Count-Based Exploration with Neural Density Models, Ostrovski et al, 2017. Algorithm: PixelCNN-based Pseudocounts.

[35]
#Exploration: A Study of Count-Based Exploration for Deep Reinforcement Learning, Tang et al, 2016. Algorithm: Hash-based Counts.

[36]
EX2: Exploration with Exemplar Models for Deep Reinforcement Learning, Fu et al, 2017. Algorithm: EX2.

[37]
Curiosity-driven Exploration by Self-supervised Prediction, Pathak et al, 2017. Algorithm: Intrinsic Curiosity Module (ICM).

[38]
Large-Scale Study of Curiosity-Driven Learning, Burda et al, 2018. Contribution: Systematic analysis of how surprisal-based intrinsic motivation performs in a wide variety of environments.

[39]
Exploration by Random Network Distillation, Burda et al, 2018. Algorithm: RND.

b. Unsupervised RL

[40]
Variational Intrinsic Control, Gregor et al, 2016. Algorithm: VIC.

[41]
Diversity is All You Need: Learning Skills without a Reward Function, Eysenbach et al, 2018. Algorithm: DIAYN.

[42]
Variational Option Discovery Algorithms, Achiam et al, 2018. Algorithm: VALOR.

3. Transfer and Multitask RL

[43]
Progressive Neural Networks, Rusu et al, 2016. Algorithm: Progressive Networks.

[44]
Universal Value Function Approximators, Schaul et al, 2015. Algorithm: UVFA.

[45]
Reinforcement Learning with Unsupervised Auxiliary Tasks, Jaderberg et al, 2016. Algorithm: UNREAL.

[46]
The Intentional Unintentional Agent: Learning to Solve Many Continuous Control Tasks Simultaneously, Cabi et al, 2017. Algorithm: IU Agent.

[47]
PathNet: Evolution Channels Gradient Descent in Super Neural Networks, Fernando et al, 2017. Algorithm: PathNet.

[48]
Mutual Alignment Transfer Learning, Wulfmeier et al, 2017. Algorithm: MATL.

[49]
Learning an Embedding Space for Transferable Robot Skills, Hausman et al, 2018.

[50]
Hindsight Experience Replay, Andrychowicz et al, 2017. Algorithm: Hindsight Experience Replay (HER).

4. Hierarchy

[51]
Strategic Attentive Writer for Learning Macro-Actions, Vezhnevets et al, 2016. Algorithm: STRAW.

[52]
FeUdal Networks for Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning, Vezhnevets et al, 2017. Algorithm: Feudal Networks

[53]
Data-Efficient Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning, Nachum et al, 2018. Algorithm: HIRO.

5. Memory

[54]
Model-Free Episodic Control, Blundell et al, 2016. Algorithm: MFEC.

[55]
Neural Episodic Control, Pritzel et al, 2017. Algorithm: NEC.

[56]
Neural Map: Structured Memory for Deep Reinforcement Learning, Parisotto and Salakhutdinov, 2017. Algorithm: Neural Map.

[57]
Unsupervised Predictive Memory in a Goal-Directed Agent, Wayne et al, 2018. Algorithm: MERLIN.

[58]
Relational Recurrent Neural Networks, Santoro et al, 2018. Algorithm: RMC.

6. Model-Based RL

a. Model is Learned

[59]
Imagination-Augmented Agents for Deep Reinforcement Learning, Weber et al, 2017. Algorithm: I2A.

[60]
Neural Network Dynamics for Model-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning with Model-Free Fine-Tuning, Nagabandi et al, 2017. Algorithm: MBMF.

[61]
Model-Based Value Expansion for Efficient Model-Free Reinforcement Learning, Feinberg et al, 2018. Algorithm: MVE.

[62]
Sample-Efficient Reinforcement Learning with Stochastic Ensemble Value Expansion, Buckman et al, 2018. Algorithm: STEVE.

[63]
Model-Ensemble Trust-Region Policy Optimization, Kurutach et al, 2018. Algorithm: ME-TRPO.

[64]
Model-Based Reinforcement Learning via Meta-Policy Optimization, Clavera et al, 2018. Algorithm: MB-MPO.

[65]
Recurrent World Models Facilitate Policy Evolution, Ha and Schmidhuber, 2018.

b. Model is Given

[66]
Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm, Silver et al, 2017. Algorithm: AlphaZero.

[67]
Thinking Fast and Slow with Deep Learning and Tree Search, Anthony et al, 2017. Algorithm: ExIt.

7. Meta-RL

[68]
RL^2: Fast Reinforcement Learning via Slow Reinforcement Learning, Duan et al, 2016. Algorithm: RL^2.

[69]
Learning to Reinforcement Learn, Wang et al, 2016.

[70]
Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning for Fast Adaptation of Deep Networks, Finn et al, 2017. Algorithm: MAML.

[71]
A Simple Neural Attentive Meta-Learner, Mishra et al, 2018. Algorithm: SNAIL.

8. Scaling RL

[72]
Accelerated Methods for Deep Reinforcement Learning, Stooke and Abbeel, 2018. Contribution: Systematic analysis of parallelization in deep RL across algorithms.

[73]
IMPALA: Scalable Distributed Deep-RL with Importance Weighted Actor-Learner Architectures, Espeholt et al, 2018. Algorithm: IMPALA.

[74]
Distributed Prioritized Experience Replay, Horgan et al, 2018. Algorithm: Ape-X.

[75]
Recurrent Experience Replay in Distributed Reinforcement Learning, Anonymous, 2018. Algorithm: R2D2.

[76]
RLlib: Abstractions for Distributed Reinforcement Learning, Liang et al, 2017. Contribution: A scalable library of RL algorithm implementations. Documentation link.

9. RL in the Real World

[77]
Benchmarking Reinforcement Learning Algorithms on Real-World Robots, Mahmood et al, 2018.

[78]
Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation, OpenAI, 2018.

[79]
QT-Opt: Scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Robotic Manipulation, Kalashnikov et al, 2018. Algorithm: QT-Opt.

[80]
Horizon: Facebook’s Open Source Applied Reinforcement Learning Platform, Gauci et al, 2018.

10. Safety

[81]
Concrete Problems in AI Safety, Amodei et al, 2016. Contribution: establishes a taxonomy of safety problems, serving as an important jumping-off point for future research. We need to solve these!

[82]
Deep Reinforcement Learning From Human Preferences, Christiano et al, 2017. Algorithm: LFP.

[83]
Constrained Policy Optimization, Achiam et al, 2017. Algorithm: CPO.

[84]
Safe Exploration in Continuous Action Spaces, Dalal et al, 2018. Algorithm: DDPG+Safety Layer.

[85]
Trial without Error: Towards Safe Reinforcement Learning via Human Intervention, Saunders et al, 2017. Algorithm: HIRL.

[86]
Leave No Trace: Learning to Reset for Safe and Autonomous Reinforcement Learning, Eysenbach et al, 2017. Algorithm: Leave No Trace.

11. Imitation Learning and Inverse Reinforcement Learning

[87]
Modeling Purposeful Adaptive Behavior with the Principle of Maximum Causal Entropy, Ziebart 2010. Contributions: Crisp formulation of maximum entropy IRL.

[88]
Guided Cost Learning: Deep Inverse Optimal Control via Policy Optimization, Finn et al, 2016. Algorithm: GCL.

[89]
Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning, Ho and Ermon, 2016. Algorithm: GAIL.

[90]
DeepMimic: Example-Guided Deep Reinforcement Learning of Physics-Based Character Skills, Peng et al, 2018. Algorithm: DeepMimic.

[91]
Variational Discriminator Bottleneck: Improving Imitation Learning, Inverse RL, and GANs by Constraining Information Flow, Peng et al, 2018. Algorithm: VAIL.

[92]
One-Shot High-Fidelity Imitation: Training Large-Scale Deep Nets with RL, Le Paine et al, 2018. Algorithm: MetaMimic.

12. Reproducibility, Analysis, and Critique

[93]
Benchmarking Deep Reinforcement Learning for Continuous Control, Duan et al, 2016. Contribution: rllab.

[94]
Reproducibility of Benchmarked Deep Reinforcement Learning Tasks for Continuous Control, Islam et al, 2017.

[95]
Deep Reinforcement Learning that Matters, Henderson et al, 2017.

[96]
Where Did My Optimum Go?: An Empirical Analysis of Gradient Descent Optimization in Policy Gradient Methods, Henderson et al, 2018.

[97]
Are Deep Policy Gradient Algorithms Truly Policy Gradient Algorithms?, Ilyas et al, 2018.

[98]
Simple Random Search Provides a Competitive Approach to Reinforcement Learning, Mania et al, 2018.

[99]
Benchmarking Model-Based Reinforcement Learning, Wang et al, 2019.

13. Bonus: Classic Papers in RL Theory or Review

[100]
Policy Gradient Methods for Reinforcement Learning with Function Approximation, Sutton et al, 2000. Contributions: Established policy gradient theorem and showed convergence of policy gradient algorithm for arbitrary policy classes.

[101]
An Analysis of Temporal-Difference Learning with Function Approximation, Tsitsiklis and Van Roy, 1997. Contributions: Variety of convergence results and counter-examples for value-learning methods in RL.

[102]
Reinforcement Learning of Motor Skills with Policy Gradients, Peters and Schaal, 2008. Contributions: Thorough review of policy gradient methods at the time, many of which are still serviceable descriptions of deep RL methods.

[103]
Approximately Optimal Approximate Reinforcement Learning, Kakade and Langford, 2002. Contributions: Early roots for monotonic improvement theory, later leading to theoretical justification for TRPO and other algorithms.

[104]
A Natural Policy Gradient, Kakade, 2002. Contributions: Brought natural gradients into RL, later leading to TRPO, ACKTR, and several other methods in deep RL.

[105]

Algorithms for Reinforcement Learning, Szepesvari, 2009. Contributions: Unbeatable reference on RL before deep RL, containing foundations and theoretical background.