mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

A Behavior Regularized Implicit Policy for Offline Reinforcement Learning

arXiv 2202.09673 ↗First posted 19 Feb 2022stat.ML cs.LGcited by 11

On the map: Offline RL and imitation learning from data → Offline RL algorithms

Abstract (arXiv)

Offline reinforcement learning enables learning from a fixed dataset, without further interactions with the environment. The lack of environmental interactions makes the policy training vulnerable to state-action pairs far from the training dataset and prone to missing rewarding actions. For training more effective agents, we propose a framework that supports learning a flexible yet well-regularized fully-implicit policy. We further propose a simple modification to the classical policy-matching methods for regularizing with respect to the dual form of the Jensen--Shannon divergence and the integral probability metrics. We theoretically show the correctness of the policy-matching approach, and the correctness and a good finite-sample property of our modification. An effective instantiation of our framework through the GAN structure is provided, together with techniques to explicitly smooth the state-action mapping for robust generalization beyond the static dataset. Extensive experiments and ablation study on the D4RL benchmark validate our framework and the effectiveness of our algorithmic designs.

Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Offline RL algorithms, one of 13 directions in Offline RL and imitation learning from data. Builds on 58 of its 89 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 Feb 2022.

Builds on

58 of 89 references.

Closest ancestors · 17

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2021Offline Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Q-Learning12 Oct
  2. 2021Uncertainty-Based Offline Reinforcement Learning with Diversified Q-Ensemble4 Oct
  3. 2021OptiDICE: Offline Policy Optimization via Stationary Distribution Correction Estimation21 Jun
  4. 2021Behavioral Priors and Dynamics Models: Improving Performance and Domain Transfer in Offline RL16 Jun
  5. 2021A Minimalist Approach to Offline Reinforcement Learning12 Jun
  6. 2021Uncertainty Weighted Actor-Critic for Offline Reinforcement Learning17 May
  7. 2021Offline Reinforcement Learning with Fisher Divergence Critic Regularization14 Mar
  8. 2021S4RL: Surprisingly Simple Self-Supervision for Offline Reinforcement Learning10 Mar
  9. 2021COMBO: Conservative Offline Model-Based Policy Optimization16 Feb
  10. 2021Risk-Averse Offline Reinforcement Learning10 Feb
  11. 2020Critic Regularized Regression26 Jun
  12. 2020Conservative Q-Learning for Offline Reinforcement Learning8 Jun
5 more
  1. 2020Offline Reinforcement Learning: Tutorial, Review, and Perspectives on Open Problems4 May
  2. 2020D4RL: Datasets for Deep Data-Driven Reinforcement Learning15 Apr
  3. 2020Keep Doing What Worked: Behavioral Modelling Priors for Offline Reinforcement Learning19 Feb
  4. 2020Confounding-Robust Policy Evaluation in Infinite-Horizon Reinforcement Learning11 Feb
  5. 2019Behavior Regularized Offline Reinforcement Learning26 Nov

Other references · 41

  1. 2014Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimizationcited by 36,960
  2. 2018Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actorcited by 4,635
  3. 2013Auto-Encoding Variational Bayescited by 3,980
  4. 2015Continuous control with deep reinforcement learningcited by 3,279
  5. 2013Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 3,211
  6. 2016Improved Techniques for Training GANscited by 2,938
  7. 2018Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methodscited by 2,302
  8. 2017Improved Training of Wasserstein GANscited by 2,223
  9. 2014Conditional Generative Adversarial Netscited by 2,152
  10. 2015Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 2,048
  11. 2018Spectral Normalization for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 1,618
  12. 2016Generative Adversarial Imitation Learningcited by 1,576
29 more
  1. 2021Decision Transformer: Reinforcement Learning via Sequence Modelingcited by 1,528
  2. 2018Demystifying MMD GANscited by 1,268
  3. 2018Off-Policy Deep Reinforcement Learning without Explorationcited by 1,227
  4. 2018Soft Actor-Critic Algorithms and Applicationscited by 1,179
  5. 2019Stabilizing Off-Policy Q-Learning via Bootstrapping Error Reductioncited by 833
  6. 2017Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrationscited by 685
  7. 2018Which Training Methods for GANs do actually Converge?cited by 672
  8. 2017Reinforcement Learning with Deep Energy-Based Policiescited by 659
  9. 2019A Survey of Autonomous Driving: Common Practices and Emerging Technologiescited by 373
  10. 2016NIPS 2016 Tutorial: Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 284
  11. 2019Way Off-Policy Batch Deep Reinforcement Learning of Implicit Human Preferences in Dialogcited by 283
  12. 2017MMD GAN: Towards Deeper Understanding of Moment Matching Networkcited by 251
  13. 2018Breaking the Curse of Horizon: Infinite-Horizon Off-Policy Estimationcited by 226
  14. 2019AlgaeDICE: Policy Gradient from Arbitrary Experiencecited by 187
  15. 2020Controlling Overestimation Bias with Truncated Mixture of Continuous Distributional Quantile Criticscited by 154
  16. 2020SUNRISE: A Simple Unified Framework for Ensemble Learning in Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 150
  17. 2017Safe Policy Improvement with Baseline Bootstrappingcited by 141
  18. 2020GenDICE: Generalized Offline Estimation of Stationary Valuescited by 122
  19. 2020Deployment-Efficient Reinforcement Learning via Model-Based Offline Optimizationcited by 120
  20. 2017The Cramer Distance as a Solution to Biased Wasserstein Gradientscited by 116
  21. 2016Off-policy evaluation for slate recommendationcited by 102
  22. 2018Offline A/B testing for Recommender Systemscited by 94
  23. 2019Diagnosing Bottlenecks in Deep Q-learning Algorithmscited by 73
  24. 2018Evaluating Reinforcement Learning Algorithms in Observational Health Settingscited by 60
  25. 2019Learning When-to-Treat Policiescited by 49
  26. 2017Many Paths to Equilibrium: GANs Do Not Need to Decrease a Divergence At Every Stepcited by 45
  27. 2020Black-box Off-policy Estimation for Infinite-Horizon Reinforcement Learningcited by 16
  28. 2020Implicit Distributional Reinforcement Learningcited by 16
  29. 2016Sampling Generative Networkscited by 5

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 3; 2024: 3; 2025: 4; 2026: 1.

11 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2023Policy Regularization with Dataset Constraint for Offline Reinforcement Learning
  2. 2024Adaptive Advantage-Guided Policy Regularization for Offline Reinforcement Learning
  3. 2023Iteratively Refined Behavior Regularization for Offline Reinforcement Learning
  4. 2021BRAC+: Improved Behavior Regularized Actor Critic for Offline Reinforcement Learning
  5. 2022Regularizing a Model-based Policy Stationary Distribution to Stabilize Offline Reinforcement Learning
  6. 2023Offline Reinforcement Learning with On-Policy Q-Function Regularization
  7. 2025Behavior-Regularized Diffusion Policy Optimization for Offline Reinforcement Learning
  8. 2024Policy-regularized Offline Multi-objective Reinforcement Learning