https://spinningup.openai.com/en/latest/spinningup/keypapers.html
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] | 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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[31] | Evolution Strategies as a Scalable Alternative to Reinforcement Learning, Salimans et al, 2017. Algorithm: ES. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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). |
[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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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. |
[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] | 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. |
[100] | 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. |
[101] | 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. |
[102] | 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. |
[103] | A Natural Policy Gradient, Kakade, 2002. Contributions: Brought natural gradients into RL, later leading to TRPO, ACKTR, and several other methods in deep RL. |
[104] | Algorithms for Reinforcement Learning, Szepesvari, 2009. Contributions: Unbeatable reference on RL before deep RL, containing foundations and theoretical background. |