Methods › Reinforcement Learning › On-Policy TD Control › Sarsa

Sarsa

introduced 1994 56 papers tagged archive 2025-07-28

archive 2025-07-28 Description, source and code snippet are the archive's method entry.

Sarsa is an on-policy TD control algorithm:

Q(Sₜ, Aₜ) ←Q(Sₜ, Aₜ) + α[Rₜ₊₁ + γQ(Sₜ₊₁, Aₜ₊₁) - Q(Sₜ, Aₜ)]

This update is done after every transition from a nonterminal state Sₜ. if Sₜ₊₁ is terminal, then Q(Sₜ₊₁, Aₜ₊₁) is defined as zero.

To design an on-policy control algorithm using Sarsa, we estimate q_π for a behaviour policy π and then change π towards greediness with respect to q_π.

Source: Sutton and Barto, Reinforcement Learning, 2nd Edition

Papers archive 2025-07-28

30 shown of 56, newest first. Repository counts are the archive's code-links table. A Syntology line states what Syntology ran from that paper's harvested code; it is per sample and not a correctness claim.

Tasks archive 2025-07-28

20 shown of 38 tasks the archive attaches to papers tagged with this method, by distinct papers. A task without a page in the catalog is plain text.

TaskPapers
Reinforcement Learning (RL)39
Q-Learning34
reinforcement-learning32
Reinforcement Learning29
Decision Making5
Deep Reinforcement Learning5
Continuous Control3
OpenAI Gym3
continuous-control3
Combinatorial Optimization2
Management2
Transfer Learning2
Traveling Salesman Problem2
Autonomous Driving1
Board Games1
CPU1
Card Games1
Classification1
Dialogue Management1
Efficient Exploration1

Usage over time archive 2025-07-28

Papers per year tagged with Sarsa: 2009 to 2025, peak 10 10 0 2009: 1 paper 2009 2010: 0 papers 2011: 0 papers 2011 2012: 0 papers 2013: 0 papers 2013 2014: 0 papers 2015: 1 paper 2015 2016: 0 papers 2017: 4 papers 2017 2018: 6 papers 2019: 5 papers 2019 2020: 8 papers 2021: 5 papers 2021 2022: 7 papers 2023: 6 papers 2023 2024: 10 papers 2025: 3 papers 2025
Papers per year the archive tags with this method, by the paper's archive date (56 dated). Bars are counts, not a trend claim.

Components: the archive holds no method-to-method composition, so PwC's Components table cannot be rebuilt; the Papers list carries no Results column for the same reason (the archive does not join its leaderboard rows to method tags).

Categories archive 2025-07-28

On-Policy TD Control

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