Paper ID: 2407.20466

A Method for Fast Autonomy Transfer in Reinforcement Learning

Dinuka Sahabandu, Bhaskar Ramasubramanian, Michail Alexiou, J. Sukarno Mertoguno, Linda Bushnell, Radha Poovendran

This paper introduces a novel reinforcement learning (RL) strategy designed to facilitate rapid autonomy transfer by utilizing pre-trained critic value functions from multiple environments. Unlike traditional methods that require extensive retraining or fine-tuning, our approach integrates existing knowledge, enabling an RL agent to adapt swiftly to new settings without requiring extensive computational resources. Our contributions include development of the Multi-Critic Actor-Critic (MCAC) algorithm, establishing its convergence, and empirical evidence demonstrating its efficacy. Our experimental results show that MCAC significantly outperforms the baseline actor-critic algorithm, achieving up to 22.76x faster autonomy transfer and higher reward accumulation. This advancement underscores the potential of leveraging accumulated knowledge for efficient adaptation in RL applications.

Submitted: Jul 29, 2024