Divide and conquer: Provably unveiling the pareto front with multi-objective reinforcement learning
 
Divide and conquer: Provably unveiling the pareto front with multi-objective reinforcement learning 
 
Willem Röpke, Willem Röpke, Mathieu Reymond, Mathieu Reymond, Patrick Mannion, Patrick Mannion, Diederik M. Roijers, Diederik M. Roijers, Ann Nowe, Ann Nowe, Roxana Radulescu, Roxana Radulescu
 
Abstract 

An important challenge in multi-objective reinforcement learning is obtaining a Pareto front of policies to attain optimal performance under different preferences. We introduce Iterated Pareto Referent Optimisation (IPRO), which decomposes finding the Pareto front into a sequence of constrained single-objective problems. This enables us to guarantee convergence while providing an upper bound on the distance to undiscovered Pareto optimal solutions at each step. We evaluate IPRO using utility-based metrics and its hypervolume and find that it matches or outperforms methods that require additional assumptions. By leveraging problem-specific single-objective solvers, our approach also holds promise for applications beyond multi-objective reinforcement learning, such as planning and pathfinding.