Probabilistic guided exploration for reinforcement learning in self-organizing neural networks

• Main Authors: WANG, Peng, ZHOU, Weigui Jair, WANG, Di, TAN, Ah-hwee
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
• Subjects: Reinforcement learning; self-organizing neural networks; guided exploration; Databases and Information Systems; OS and Networks
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/5467; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/6470/viewcontent/ICA2018MineField.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Exploration is essential in reinforcement learning, which expands the search space of potential solutions to a given problem for performance evaluations. Specifically, carefully designed exploration strategy may help the agent learn faster by taking the advantage of what it has learned previously. However, many reinforcement learning mechanisms still adopt simple exploration strategies, which select actions in a pure random manner among all the feasible actions. In this paper, we propose novel mechanisms to improve the existing knowledgebased exploration strategy based on a probabilistic guided approach to select actions. We conduct extensive experiments in a Minefield navigation simulator and the results show that our proposed probabilistic guided exploration approach significantly improves the convergence rate.