Policy Gradient using Weak Derivatives for Reinforcement Learning

This paper considers policy search in continuous state-action reinforcement learning problems. Typically, one computes search directions using a classic expression for the policy gradient called the Policy Gradient Theorem, which decomposes the gradient of the value function into two factors: the score function and the Q-function. This paper presents four results: (i) an alternative policy gradient theorem using weak (measure-valued) derivatives instead of score-function is established; (ii) the stochastic gradient estimates thus derived are shown to be unbiased and to yield algorithms that converge almost surely to stationary points of the non-convex value function of the reinforcement learning problem; (iii) the sample complexity of the algorithm is derived and is shown to be O(1/ k); (iv) finally, the expected variance of the gradient estimates obtained using weak derivatives is shown to be lower than those obtained using the popular score-function approach. Experiments on OpenAI gym pendulum environment illustrate the superior performance of the proposed algorithm.