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This paper introduces BAPR, a novel reinforcement learning framework designed to handle non-stationary environments by unifying Bayesian Online Change Detection with robust ensemble methods. The work provides rigorous mathematical guarantees through machine-verified proofs in Lean 4, establishing sharp boundaries for policy contraction and deriving formal error budgets for recovery after regime shifts. By adapting conservatism dynamically based on detection confidence, the method addresses the critical trade-off between performance during stable periods and safety during abrupt changes.
Source coveringarXiv

BAPR: Bayesian amnesic piecewise-robust reinforcement learning for non-stationary continuous control

arXiv3 min read

arXiv:2605.16170v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Real-world control systems frequently operate under \emph{piecewise stationary} conditions, where dynamics remain stable for extended periods before undergoing abrupt regime changes. Standard robust RL methods face a fundamental dilemma: a globally conservative policy wastes performance during stable periods, while a locally adaptive policy risks catastrophic failure when the regime changes undetected. We propose \textbf{BAPR} (Bayesian Amnesic Piecewise-Robust SAC), which unifies Bayesian Online Change Detection (BOCD) with robust ensemble RL. The BAPR operator -- a convex combination of mode-conditional Bellman operators weighted by a frozen belief distribution -- is a $\gamma$-contraction. A complementary counterexample, machine-verified in Lean~4, establishes a \emph{sharp boundary}: when beliefs depend on the Q-function, the contraction factor becomes $\gamma + \lambda\Delta$ (where $\Delta$ is the mode reward gap), and contraction fails exactly when $\gamma + \lambda\Delta \geq 1$. We derive a \emph{component-wise} formal error budget for the abstract operator -- every component machine-verified -- bounding post-switch recovery; the budget applies to the abstract mode-mixture operator and inherits to the implemented shared-critic algorithm only through the frozen-parameter design intuition. All results are formally verified with no \texttt{sorry} (1,145 lines across 3 Lean~4 files, 22 machine-verified theorems). BOCD drives an adaptive conservatism mechanism: the policy becomes maximally conservative after detected change-points and smoothly relaxes as confidence grows, with detection delay $O(\log(1/\delta))$. A context-conditioning module trained via RMDM loss provides mode-aware representations from simulator-provided mode IDs at training time and requires no mode labels at deployment.

Abstract:Real-world control systems frequently operate under \emph{piecewise stationary} conditions, where dynamics remain stable for extended periods before undergoing abrupt regime changes. Standard robust RL methods face a fundamental dilemma: a globally conservative policy wastes performance during stable periods, while a locally adaptive policy risks catastrophic failure when the regime changes undetected. We propose \textbf{BAPR} (Bayesian Amnesic Piecewise-Robust SAC), which unifies Bayesian Online Change Detection (BOCD) with robust ensemble RL. The BAPR operator -- a convex combination of mode-conditional Bellman operators weighted by a frozen belief distribution -- is a $\gamma$-contraction. A complementary counterexample, machine-verified in Lean~4, establishes a \emph{sharp boundary}: when beliefs depend on the Q-function, the contraction factor becomes $\gamma + \lambda\Delta$ (where $\Delta$ is the mode reward gap), and contraction fails exactly when $\gamma + \lambda\Delta \geq 1$. We derive a \emph{component-wise} formal error budget for the abstract operator -- every component machine-verified -- bounding post-switch recovery; the budget applies to the abstract mode-mixture operator and inherits to the implemented shared-critic algorithm only through the frozen-parameter design intuition. All results are formally verified with no \texttt{sorry} (1,145 lines across 3 Lean~4 files, 22 machine-verified theorems). BOCD drives an adaptive conservatism mechanism: the policy becomes maximally conservative after detected change-points and smoothly relaxes as confidence grows, with detection delay $O(\log(1/\delta))$. A context-conditioning module trained via RMDM loss provides mode-aware representations from simulator-provided mode IDs at training time and requires no mode labels at deployment.

Machine Learning (cs.LG)

arXiv:2605.16170 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2605.16170v3 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.16170 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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