Stochastic gradient descent is a universal choice for optimizing deep learning models. However, it is not the only option. With black-box optimization algorithms, you can evaluate a target function $f(x): \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}$, even when you don’t know the precise analytic form of $f(x)$ and thus cannot compute gradients or the Hessian matrix. Examples of black-box optimization methods include Simulated Annealing, Hill Climbing and Nelder-Mead method. Evolution Strategies (ES) is one...| lilianweng.github.io
In Robotics, one of the hardest problems is how to make your model transfer to the real world. Due to the sample inefficiency of deep RL algorithms and the cost of data collection on real robots, we often need to train models in a simulator which theoretically provides an infinite amount of data. However, the reality gap between the simulator and the physical world often leads to failure when working with physical robots.| lilianweng.github.io
A Visual Guide to Evolution Strategies| 大トロ ・ Machine Learning