智能代理人应该有能力利用先前学习的任务中的知识，以便快速有效地学习新任务。元学习方法已成为实现这一目标的流行解决方案。然而，迄今为止，元强化学习（META-RL）算法仅限于具有狭窄任务分布的简单环境。此外，预处理的范式随后进行了微调以适应新任务，这是一种简单而有效的解决方案，这些解决方案是监督和自我监督的学习。这使质疑元学习方法的好处在加强学习中的好处，这通常是以高复杂性为代价的。因此，我们研究了包括Procgen，rlbench和Atari在内的各种基于视觉的基准测试中的元RL方法，在这些基准测试中，对完全新颖的任务进行了评估。我们的发现表明，当对不同任务（而不是相同任务的不同变化）评估元学习方法时，对新任务进行微调的多任务预处理也相同或更好，或者更好，比用meta进行元数据。测试时间适应。这对于将来的研究令人鼓舞，因为多任务预处理往往比Meta-RL更简单和计算更便宜。从这些发现中，我们主张评估未来的Meta-RL方法在更具挑战性的任务上，并包括以简单但强大的基线进行微调预处理。

我们开发了一种新的持续元学习方法，以解决连续多任务学习中的挑战。在此设置中，代理商的目标是快速通过任何任务序列实现高奖励。先前的Meta-Creenifiltive学习算法已经表现出有希望加速收购新任务的结果。但是，他们需要在培训期间访问所有任务。除了简单地将过去的经验转移到新任务，我们的目标是设计学习学习的持续加强学习算法，使用他们以前任务的经验更快地学习新任务。我们介绍了一种新的方法，连续的元策略搜索（Comps），通过以增量方式，在序列中的每个任务上，通过序列的每个任务来消除此限制，而无需重新访问先前的任务。 Comps持续重复两个子程序：使用RL学习新任务，并使用RL的经验完全离线Meta学习，为后续任务学习做好准备。我们发现，在若干挑战性连续控制任务的旧序列上，Comps优于持续的持续学习和非政策元增强方法。

基于模型的强化学习的关键承诺之一是使用世界内部模型拓展到新颖的环境和任务中的预测。然而，模型的代理商的泛化能力尚不清楚，因为现有的工作在基准测试概括时专注于无模型剂。在这里，我们明确测量模型的代理的泛化能力与其无模型对应物相比。我们专注于Muzero（Schrittwieser等，2020），强大的基于模型的代理商的分析，并评估其在过程和任务泛化方面的性能。我们确定了一个程序概括规划，自我监督代表学习和程序数据分集的三个因素 - 并表明通过组合这些技术，我们实现了普通的最先进的概括性和数据效率（Cobbe等人。，2019）。但是，我们发现这些因素并不总是为Meta-World中的任务泛化基准提供相同的益处（Yu等人，2019），表明转移仍然是一个挑战，可能需要不同的方法而不是程序泛化。总的来说，我们建议建立一个推广的代理需要超越单任务，无模型范例，并朝着在丰富，程序，多任务环境中培训的基于自我监督的模型的代理。

对看不见的环境变化的深入强化学习的概括通常需要对大量各种培训变化进行政策学习。我们从经验上观察到，接受过许多变化的代理商（通才）倾向于在一开始就更快地学习，但是长期以来其最佳水平的性能高原。相比之下，只接受一些变体培训的代理商（专家）通常可以在有限的计算预算下获得高回报。为了两全其美，我们提出了一个新颖的通才特权训练框架。具体来说，我们首先培训一名通才的所有环境变化。当它无法改善时，我们会推出大量的专家，并从通才克隆过重量，每个人都接受了训练，以掌握选定的一小部分变化子集。我们终于通过所有专家的示范引起的辅助奖励恢复了通才的培训。特别是，我们调查了开始专业培训的时机，并在专家的帮助下比较策略以学习通才。我们表明，该框架将政策学习的信封推向了包括Procgen，Meta-World和Maniskill在内的几个具有挑战性和流行的基准。

强化学习（RL）算法有望为机器人系统实现自主技能获取。但是，实际上，现实世界中的机器人RL通常需要耗时的数据收集和频繁的人类干预来重置环境。此外，当部署超出知识的设置超出其学习的设置时，使用RL学到的机器人政策通常会失败。在这项工作中，我们研究了如何通过从先前看到的任务中收集的各种离线数据集的有效利用来应对这些挑战。当面对一项新任务时，我们的系统会适应以前学习的技能，以快速学习执行新任务并将环境返回到初始状态，从而有效地执行自己的环境重置。我们的经验结果表明，将先前的数据纳入机器人增强学习中可以实现自主学习，从而大大提高了学习的样本效率，并可以更好地概括。

Progress in continual reinforcement learning has been limited due to several barriers to entry: missing code, high compute requirements, and a lack of suitable benchmarks. In this work, we present CORA, a platform for Continual Reinforcement Learning Agents that provides benchmarks, baselines, and metrics in a single code package. The benchmarks we provide are designed to evaluate different aspects of the continual RL challenge, such as catastrophic forgetting, plasticity, ability to generalize, and sample-efficient learning. Three of the benchmarks utilize video game environments (Atari, Procgen, NetHack). The fourth benchmark, CHORES, consists of four different task sequences in a visually realistic home simulator, drawn from a diverse set of task and scene parameters. To compare continual RL methods on these benchmarks, we prepare three metrics in CORA: Continual Evaluation, Isolated Forgetting, and Zero-Shot Forward Transfer. Finally, CORA includes a set of performant, open-source baselines of existing algorithms for researchers to use and expand on. We release CORA and hope that the continual RL community can benefit from our contributions, to accelerate the development of new continual RL algorithms.

Meta-reinforcement learning algorithms can enable robots to acquire new skills much more quickly, by leveraging prior experience to learn how to learn. However, much of the current research on meta-reinforcement learning focuses on task distributions that are very narrow. For example, a commonly used meta-reinforcement learning benchmark uses different running velocities for a simulated robot as different tasks. When policies are meta-trained on such narrow task distributions, they cannot possibly generalize to more quickly acquire entirely new tasks. Therefore, if the aim of these methods is enable faster acquisition of entirely new behaviors, we must evaluate them on task distributions that are sufficiently broad to enable generalization to new behaviors. In this paper, we propose an open-source simulated benchmark for meta-reinforcement learning and multitask learning consisting of 50 distinct robotic manipulation tasks. Our aim is to make it possible to develop algorithms that generalize to accelerate the acquisition of entirely new, held-out tasks. We evaluate 7 state-of-the-art meta-reinforcement learning and multi-task learning algorithms on these tasks. Surprisingly, while each task and its variations (e.g., with different object positions) can be learned with reasonable success, these algorithms struggle to learn with multiple tasks at the same time, even with as few as ten distinct training tasks. Our analysis and open-source environments pave the way for future research in multi-task learning and meta-learning that can enable meaningful generalization, thereby unlocking the full potential of these methods. 1

元强化学习（RL）方法可以使用比标准RL少的数据级的元培训策略，但元培训本身既昂贵又耗时。如果我们可以在离线数据上进行元训练，那么我们可以重复使用相同的静态数据集，该数据集将一次标记为不同任务的奖励，以在元测试时间适应各种新任务的元训练策略。尽管此功能将使Meta-RL成为现实使用的实用工具，但离线META-RL提出了除在线META-RL或标准离线RL设置之外的其他挑战。 Meta-RL学习了一种探索策略，该策略收集了用于适应的数据，并元培训策略迅速适应了新任务的数据。由于该策略是在固定的离线数据集上进行了元训练的，因此当适应学识渊博的勘探策略收集的数据时，它可能表现得不可预测，这与离线数据有系统地不同，从而导致分布变化。我们提出了一种混合脱机元元素算法，该算法使用带有奖励的脱机数据来进行自适应策略，然后收集其他无监督的在线数据，而无需任何奖励标签来桥接这一分配变化。通过不需要在线收集的奖励标签，此数据可以便宜得多。我们将我们的方法比较了在模拟机器人的运动和操纵任务上进行离线元rl的先前工作，并发现使用其他无监督的在线数据收集可以显着提高元训练政策的自适应能力，从而匹配完全在线的表现。在一系列具有挑战性的域上，需要对新任务进行概括。

人类可以利用先前的经验，并从少数示威活动中学习新颖的任务。与旨在通过更好的算法设计来快速适应的离线元强化学习相反，我们研究了建筑归纳偏见对少量学习能力的影响。我们提出了一个基于及时的决策变压器（提示-DT），该变压器利用了变压器体系结构和及时框架的顺序建模能力，以在离线RL中实现少量适应。我们设计了轨迹提示，其中包含少量演示的片段，并编码特定于任务的信息以指导策略生成。我们在五个Mujoco控制基准中进行的实验表明，提示-DT是一个强大的少数学习者，而没有对看不见的目标任务进行任何额外的填充。提示-DT的表现优于其变体和强大的元线RL基线，只有一个轨迹提示符只包含少量时间段。提示-DT也很健壮，可以提示长度更改并可以推广到分布（OOD）环境。

Meta-Renifiltive学习（Meta-RL）已被证明是利用事先任务的经验，以便快速学习新的相关任务的成功框架，但是，当前的Meta-RL接近在稀疏奖励环境中学习的斗争。尽管现有的Meta-RL算法可以学习适应新的稀疏奖励任务的策略，但是使用手形奖励功能来学习实际适应策略，或者需要简单的环境，其中随机探索足以遇到稀疏奖励。在本文中，我们提出了对Meta-RL的后视抢购的制定，该rl抢购了在Meta培训期间的经验，以便能够使用稀疏奖励完全学习。我们展示了我们的方法在套件挑战稀疏奖励目标达到的环境中，以前需要密集的奖励，以便在Meta训练中解决。我们的方法使用真正的稀疏奖励功能来解决这些环境，性能与具有代理密集奖励功能的培训相当。

Deep reinforcement learning algorithms require large amounts of experience to learn an individual task. While in principle meta-reinforcement learning (meta-RL) algorithms enable agents to learn new skills from small amounts of experience, several major challenges preclude their practicality. Current methods rely heavily on on-policy experience, limiting their sample efficiency. The also lack mechanisms to reason about task uncertainty when adapting to new tasks, limiting their effectiveness in sparse reward problems. In this paper, we address these challenges by developing an offpolicy meta-RL algorithm that disentangles task inference and control. In our approach, we perform online probabilistic filtering of latent task variables to infer how to solve a new task from small amounts of experience. This probabilistic interpretation enables posterior sampling for structured and efficient exploration. We demonstrate how to integrate these task variables with off-policy RL algorithms to achieve both metatraining and adaptation efficiency. Our method outperforms prior algorithms in sample efficiency by 20-100X as well as in asymptotic performance on several meta-RL benchmarks.

一致性是一元的学习算法，保证了在一定条件下，它可以在测试时间适应任何任务的理论性能。一个悬而未决的问题是，是否以及如何一致性理论转化为实践，在比较不一致的算法。在本文中，我们经验调查的一组代表性元RL算法这个问题。我们发现，在理论上是一致的算法的确可以通常适应外的分布（OOD）的任务，而那些不一致不能，虽然他们可以在实践中仍然无法像勘探不佳的原因。我们进一步发现，理论上不一致的算法可以由通过不断更新的OOD任务的所有剂成分一致，并适应以及或优于原先一致的。我们的结论是理论的一致性确实是一个理想的财产，且不一致元-RL算法可以很容易地做出一致的，享受同样的好处。

深入学习的强化学习（RL）的结合导致了一系列令人印象深刻的壮举，许多相信（深）RL提供了一般能力的代理。然而，RL代理商的成功往往对培训过程中的设计选择非常敏感，这可能需要繁琐和易于易于的手动调整。这使得利用RL对新问题充满挑战，同时也限制了其全部潜力。在许多其他机器学习领域，AutomL已经示出了可以自动化这样的设计选择，并且在应用于RL时也会产生有希望的初始结果。然而，自动化强化学习（AutorL）不仅涉及Automl的标准应用，而且还包括RL独特的额外挑战，其自然地产生了不同的方法。因此，Autorl已成为RL中的一个重要研究领域，提供来自RNA设计的各种应用中的承诺，以便玩游戏等游戏。鉴于RL中考虑的方法和环境的多样性，在不同的子领域进行了大部分研究，从Meta学习到进化。在这项调查中，我们寻求统一自动的领域，我们提供常见的分类法，详细讨论每个区域并对研究人员来说是一个兴趣的开放问题。

深度加强学习概括（RL）的研究旨在产生RL算法，其政策概括为在部署时间进行新的未经调整情况，避免对其培训环境的过度接受。如果我们要在现实世界的情景中部署强化学习算法，那么解决这一点至关重要，那么环境将多样化，动态和不可预测。该调查是这个新生领域的概述。我们为讨论不同的概括问题提供统一的形式主义和术语，在以前的作品上建立不同的概括问题。我们继续对现有的基准进行分类，以及用于解决泛化问题的当前方法。最后，我们提供了对现场当前状态的关键讨论，包括未来工作的建议。在其他结论之外，我们认为，采取纯粹的程序内容生成方法，基准设计不利于泛化的进展，我们建议快速在线适应和将RL特定问题解决作为未来泛化方法的一些领域，我们推荐在UniTexplorated问题设置中构建基准测试，例如离线RL泛化和奖励函数变化。

元加强学习（META-RL）是一种方法，即从解决各种任务中获得的经验被蒸馏成元政策。当仅适应一个小（或仅一个）数量的步骤时，元派利赛能够在新的相关任务上近距离执行。但是，采用这种方法来解决现实世界中的问题的主要挑战是，它们通常与稀疏的奖励功能相关联，这些功能仅表示任务是部分或完全完成的。我们考虑到某些数据可能由亚最佳代理生成的情况，可用于每个任务。然后，我们使用示范（EMRLD）开发了一类名为“增强元RL”的算法，即使在训练过程中获得了次优的指导，也可以利用此信息。我们展示了EMRLD如何共同利用RL和在离线数据上进行监督学习，以生成一个显示单调性能改进的元数据。我们还开发了一个称为EMRLD-WS的温暖开始的变体，该变体对于亚最佳演示数据特别有效。最后，我们表明，在包括移动机器人在内的各种稀疏奖励环境中，我们的EMRLD算法显着优于现有方法。

Inspired by progress in large-scale language modeling, we apply a similar approach towards building a single generalist agent beyond the realm of text outputs. The agent, which we refer to as Gato, works as a multi-modal, multi-task, multi-embodiment generalist policy. The same network with the same weights can play Atari, caption images, chat, stack blocks with a real robot arm and much more, deciding based on its context whether to output text, joint torques, button presses, or other tokens. In this report we describe the model and the data, and document the current capabilities of Gato.

Lifelong learning aims to create AI systems that continuously and incrementally learn during a lifetime, similar to biological learning. Attempts so far have met problems, including catastrophic forgetting, interference among tasks, and the inability to exploit previous knowledge. While considerable research has focused on learning multiple input distributions, typically in classification, lifelong reinforcement learning (LRL) must also deal with variations in the state and transition distributions, and in the reward functions. Modulating masks, recently developed for classification, are particularly suitable to deal with such a large spectrum of task variations. In this paper, we adapted modulating masks to work with deep LRL, specifically PPO and IMPALA agents. The comparison with LRL baselines in both discrete and continuous RL tasks shows competitive performance. We further investigated the use of a linear combination of previously learned masks to exploit previous knowledge when learning new tasks: not only is learning faster, the algorithm solves tasks that we could not otherwise solve from scratch due to extremely sparse rewards. The results suggest that RL with modulating masks is a promising approach to lifelong learning, to the composition of knowledge to learn increasingly complex tasks, and to knowledge reuse for efficient and faster learning.

Using massive datasets to train large-scale models has emerged as a dominant approach for broad generalization in natural language and vision applications. In reinforcement learning, however, a key challenge is that available data of sequential decision making is often not annotated with actions - for example, videos of game-play are much more available than sequences of frames paired with their logged game controls. We propose to circumvent this challenge by combining large but sparsely-annotated datasets from a \emph{target} environment of interest with fully-annotated datasets from various other \emph{source} environments. Our method, Action Limited PreTraining (ALPT), leverages the generalization capabilities of inverse dynamics modelling (IDM) to label missing action data in the target environment. We show that utilizing even one additional environment dataset of labelled data during IDM pretraining gives rise to substantial improvements in generating action labels for unannotated sequences. We evaluate our method on benchmark game-playing environments and show that we can significantly improve game performance and generalization capability compared to other approaches, using annotated datasets equivalent to only $12$ minutes of gameplay. Highlighting the power of IDM, we show that these benefits remain even when target and source environments share no common actions.

Hierarchical methods in reinforcement learning have the potential to reduce the amount of decisions that the agent needs to perform when learning new tasks. However, finding a reusable useful temporal abstractions that facilitate fast learning remains a challenging problem. Recently, several deep learning approaches were proposed to learn such temporal abstractions in the form of options in an end-to-end manner. In this work, we point out several shortcomings of these methods and discuss their potential negative consequences. Subsequently, we formulate the desiderata for reusable options and use these to frame the problem of learning options as a gradient-based meta-learning problem. This allows us to formulate an objective that explicitly incentivizes options which allow a higher-level decision maker to adjust in few steps to different tasks. Experimentally, we show that our method is able to learn transferable components which accelerate learning and performs better than existing prior methods developed for this setting. Additionally, we perform ablations to quantify the impact of using gradient-based meta-learning as well as other proposed changes.

While reinforcement learning (RL) has become a more popular approach for robotics, designing sufficiently informative reward functions for complex tasks has proven to be extremely difficult due their inability to capture human intent and policy exploitation. Preference based RL algorithms seek to overcome these challenges by directly learning reward functions from human feedback. Unfortunately, prior work either requires an unreasonable number of queries implausible for any human to answer or overly restricts the class of reward functions to guarantee the elicitation of the most informative queries, resulting in models that are insufficiently expressive for realistic robotics tasks. Contrary to most works that focus on query selection to \emph{minimize} the amount of data required for learning reward functions, we take an opposite approach: \emph{expanding} the pool of available data by viewing human-in-the-loop RL through the more flexible lens of multi-task learning. Motivated by the success of meta-learning, we pre-train preference models on prior task data and quickly adapt them for new tasks using only a handful of queries. Empirically, we reduce the amount of online feedback needed to train manipulation policies in Meta-World by 20$\times$, and demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on a real Franka Panda Robot. Moreover, this reduction in query-complexity allows us to train robot policies from actual human users. Videos of our results and code can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/few-shot-preference-rl/home.