# Off-Policy Correction for Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient Algorithms via Batch Prioritized Experience Replay

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.01865 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.01865/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Nov 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Continuous control with deep reinforcement learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.02971/) (2015)
- [Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.5602/) (2013)
- [Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09477/) (2018)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning with Double Q-learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.06461/) (2015)
- [Off-Policy Deep Reinforcement Learning without Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02900/) (2018)
- [Hindsight Experience Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.01495/) (2017)
- [Prioritized Experience Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.05952/) (2015)
- [Sample Efficient Actor-Critic with Experience Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01224/) (2016)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning and the Deadly Triad](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02648/) (2018)
- [A Deeper Look at Experience Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.01275/) (2017)
- [Experience Replay Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08387/) (2019)
- [Learning to Sample with Local and Global Contexts in Experience Replay Buffer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.07358/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Mitigating Off-Policy Bias in Actor-Critic Methods with One-Step Q-learning: A Novel Correction Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00755/) (2022)
- [Augmenting Offline RL with Unlabeled Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07117/) (2024)
- [Enhancing Deep Deterministic Policy Gradients on Continuous Control Tasks with Decoupled Prioritized Experience Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.05320/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The experience replay mechanism allows agents to use the experiences multiple times. In prior works, the sampling probability of the transitions was adjusted according to their importance. Reassigning sampling probabilities for every transition in the replay buffer after each iteration is highly inefficient. Therefore, experience replay prioritization algorithms recalculate the significance of a transition when the corresponding transition is sampled to gain computational efficiency. However, the importance level of the transitions changes dynamically as the policy and the value function of the agent are updated. In addition, experience replay stores the transitions are generated by the previous policies of the agent that may significantly deviate from the most recent policy of the agent. Higher deviation from the most recent policy of the agent leads to more off-policy updates, which is detrimental for the agent. In this paper, we develop a novel algorithm, Batch Prioritizing Experience Replay via KL Divergence (KLPER), which prioritizes batch of transitions rather than directly prioritizing each transition. Moreover, to reduce the off-policyness of the updates, our algorithm selects one batch among a certain number of batches and forces the agent to learn through the batch that is most likely generated by the most recent policy of the agent. We combine our algorithm with Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient and Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient and evaluate it on various continuous control tasks. KLPER provides promising improvements for deep deterministic continuous control algorithms in terms of sample efficiency, final performance, and stability of the policy during the training.