Papers › FLEX: an Adaptive Exploration Algorithm for Nonlinear Systems

FLEX: an Adaptive Exploration Algorithm for Nonlinear Systems

26 Apr 2023arXiv:2304.13426archive 2025-07-28

Matthieu Blanke, Marc Lelarge

Model-based reinforcement learning is a powerful tool, but collecting data to fit an accurate model of the system can be costly. Exploring an unknown environment in a sample-efficient manner is hence of great importance. However, the complexity of dynamics and the computational limitations of real systems make this task challenging. In this work, we introduce FLEX, an exploration algorithm for nonlinear dynamics based on optimal experimental design. Our policy maximizes the information of the next step and results in an adaptive exploration algorithm, compatible with generic parametric learning models and requiring minimal resources. We test our method on a number of nonlinear environments covering different settings, including time-varying dynamics. Keeping in mind that exploration is intended to serve an exploitation objective, we also test our algorithm on downstream model-based classical control tasks and compare it to other state-of-the-art model-based and model-free approaches. The performance achieved by FLEX is competitive and its computational cost is low.

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lstsq_update mb-29/exploration/policies.py official repository ran · honoured contract fingerprinted MIT (permissive) · 25092c545b43ea9a · report
minimize_quadratic_sphere mb-29/exploration/policies.py official repository ran · fixture could not drive it fingerprinted MIT (permissive) · dbc3dffc9bfe8463 · report
solve_D_optimal mb-29/exploration/policies.py official repository ran · fixture could not drive it fingerprinted MIT (permissive) · 39b2a6bd5776c7f3 · report
Agent mb-29/exploration/policies.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · 11c4b78255fe10ce · report
Flex mb-29/exploration/policies.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · 83f0d1c7272aedb1 · report
compute_gradient mb-29/exploration/policies.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · 0b1f3fb0f715e6b0 · report
exploration MB-29/exploration/exploration.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · 6c1192aa05d301cc · report
jacobian mb-29/exploration/policies.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · 21db7871139de360 · report

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Experimental DesignModel-based Reinforcement Learning

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