CTD4 - a Deep Continuous Distributional Actor-Critic Agent with a Kalman Fusion of Multiple Critics
David Valencia, Henry Williams, Yuning Xing, Trevor Gee, Bruce A. MacDonald, Minas Liarokapis
Abstract
Categorical Distributional Reinforcement Learning (CDRL) has demonstrated superior sample efficiency in learning complex tasks compared to conventional Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches. However, the practical application of CDRL is encumbered by challenging projection steps, detailed parameter tuning, and domain knowledge. This paper addresses these challenges by introducing a pioneering Continuous Distributional Model-Free RL algorithm tailored for continuous action spaces. The proposed algorithm simplifies the implementation of distributional RL, adopting an actor-critic architecture wherein the critic outputs a continuous probability distribution. Additionally, we propose an ensemble of multiple critics fused through a Kalman fusion mechanism to mitigate overestimation bias. Through a series of experiments, we validate that our proposed method provides a sample-efficient solution for executing complex continuous-control tasks.
Ask about this paper
Your agent reads all of it.
Lune indexed this paper to the last equation, along with the top-tier papers that cite it. Ask a question and the answer quotes them.
Your agent calls
Luneget_paper_fulltext
Free to start. No credit card required.
Terminal
Install the CLIlune papers fulltext 088fbe13-9d6d-41f5-8a79-587121a26d45Cited by top-tier papers1
Ask how each one uses itBuilds on3
- Controlling Overestimation Bias with Truncated Mixture of Continuous Distributional Quantile CriticsArsenii Kuznetsov, Pavel Shvechikov, Alexander Grishin, Dmitry P. VetrovICML 2020 · 266 citations
- Maxmin Q-learning: Controlling the Estimation Bias of Q-learningQingfeng Lan, Yangchen Pan, Alona Fyshe, Martha WhiteICLR 2020 · 213 citations
- Randomized Ensembled Double Q-Learning: Learning Fast Without a ModelXinyue Chen, Che Wang, Zijian Zhou, Keith W. RossICLR 2021 · 26 citations
Related papers
- Promoting Stochasticity for Expressive Policies via a Simple and Efficient Regularization MethodQi Zhou, Yufei Kuang, Zherui Qiu, Houqiang Li et al.NeurIPS 2020 · 9 citations
- Distributions as Actions: A Unified Framework for Diverse Action SpacesJiamin He, A. Rupam Mahmood, Martha WhiteICLR 2026
- Efficient Continuous Control with Double Actors and Regularized CriticsJiafei Lyu, Xiaoteng Ma, Jiangpeng Yan, Xiu LiAAAI 2022 · 69 citations
- Categorical Distributional Reinforcement Learning with Kullback-Leibler Divergence: Convergence and AsymptoticsTyler Kastner, Mark Rowland, Yunhao Tang, Murat A. Erdogdu et al.ICML 2025
- Variance Control for Distributional Reinforcement LearningQi Kuang, Zhoufan Zhu, Liwen Zhang, Fan ZhouICML 2023 · 4 citations
