$Q$-learning with regularization converges with non-linear non-stationary features

Diogo S. Carvalho, Francisco S. Melo, Pedro A. Santos

Keywords: Q-learning, Reinforcement Learning, Stochastic Approximation

Abstract: The deep $Q$-learning architecture is a neural network composed of non-linear hidden layers that learn features of states and actions and a final linear layer that learns the $Q$-values of the features. The parameters of both components can possibly diverge. Regularization of the updates is known to solve the divergence problem of fully linear architectures, where features are stationary and known a priori. We propose a deep $Q$-learning scheme that uses regularization of the final linear layer of architecture, updating it along a faster time-scale, and stochastic full-gradient descent updates for the non-linear features at a slower time-scale. We prove the proposed scheme converges with probability 1. Finally, we provide a bound on the error introduced by regularization of the final linear layer of the architecture.

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