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In this article, we address two key challenges in deep reinforcement learning (DRL) setting, sample inefficiency and slow learning, with a dual-neural network (NN)-driven learning approach. In the proposed approach, we use two deep NNs with independent initialization to robustly approximate the action-value function in the presence of image inputs. In particular, we develop a temporal difference (TD) error-driven learning (EDL) approach, where we introduce a set of linear transformations of the TD error to directly update the parameters of each layer in the deep NN. We demonstrate theoretically that the cost minimized by the EDL regime is an approximation of the empirical cost, and the approximation error reduces as learning progresses, irrespective of the size of the network. Using simulation analysis, we show that the proposed methods enable faster learning and convergence and require reduced buffer size (thereby increasing the sample efficiency).

Recently introduced deep reinforcement learning (DRL) techniques in discrete-time have resulted in significant advances in online games, robotics, and so on. Inspired from recent developments, we have proposed an approach referred to as Quantile Critic with Spiking Actor and Normalized Ensemble (QC_SANE) for continuous control problems, which uses quantile loss to train critic and a spiking neural network (NN) to train an ensemble of actors. The NN does an internal normalization using a scaled exponential linear unit (SELU) activation function and ensures robustness. The empirical study on multijoint dynamics with contact (MuJoCo)-based environments shows improved training and test results than the state-of-the-art approach: population coded spiking actor network (PopSAN).