title: Efficient Exploration through Bayesian   Deep Q-Networks
abstract: We propose Bayesian Deep Q-Network  (BDQN), a  practical Thompson sampling based Reinforcement Learning (RL) Algorithm. Thompson sampling allows for targeted exploration in high dimensions through posterior sampling but is usually computationally expensive. We address this limitation by introducing uncertainty only at the output layer of the network through a Bayesian Linear Regression (BLR) model, which can be trained with fast closed-form updates and its samples can be drawn efficiently through the Gaussian distribution. We apply our method to a wide range of Atari Arcade Learning Environments. Since BDQN carries out more efficient exploration, it is able to reach higher rewards substantially faster than a key baseline, DDQN.
authors: Kamyar Azizzadenesheli Emma Brunskill Animashree Anandkumar
hIndex: Animashree Anandkumar 49