curiosity-es

_posts/2023-12-07-curiosity-es.md

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+## Curiosity Creates Diversity in Policy Search
+
+We are pleased to announce the publication of the research paper titled "Curiosity Creates Diversity in Policy Search" in the journal Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization. 
+This work was co-authored by Paul-Antoine, Emmanuel, Yann Besse and Dennis.
+
+### Abstract of the Research
+When searching for policies, reward-sparse environments often lack sufficient
+information about which behaviors to improve upon or avoid. In such environments,
+the policy search process is bound to blindly search for reward-yielding transitions
+and no early reward can bias this search in one direction or another. A way to
+overcome this is to use intrinsic motivation in order to explore new transitions
+until a reward is found. In this work, we use a recently proposed definition of
+intrinsic motivation, Curiosity, in an evolutionary policy search method. We
+propose Curiosity-ES, an evolutionary strategy adapted to use Curiosity as a
+fitness metric. We compare Curiosity-ES with other evolutionary algorithms
+intended for exploration, as well as with Curiosity-based reinforcement learning,
+and find that Curiosity-ES can generate higher diversity without the need for an
+explicit diversity criterion and leads to more policies which find reward.
+
+### Key Findings
+
+* An algorithm that creates diversity without the need for an explicit diversity criterion.
+* Curiosity-ES outperforms other exploration algorithms in sparse-reward scenarios.
+* Empirical demonstration that combining the Curiosity exploration bonus with Evolutionary Strategies (ES) maintains a better balance in the inherent two-player game of exploration methods using uncertainty bonuses.
+### Publication Details
+* **Title**: Curiosity Creates Diversity in Policy Search
+* **Journal**: Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization
+* **Link to Publication**: Read the full paper [here](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3605782)