EvoRL: A GPU-accelerated Framework for Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning (EvoRL) has emerged as a promising approach to overcoming the limitations of traditional reinforcement learning (RL) by integrating the Evolutionary Computation (EC) paradigm with RL. However, the population-based nature of EC significantly increases computational costs, thereby restricting the exploration of algorithmic design choices and scalability in large-scale settings. To address this challenge, we introduce $\texttt{$\textbf{EvoRL}$}$, the first end-to-end EvoRL framework optimized for GPU acceleration. The framework executes the entire training pipeline on accelerators, including environment simulations and EC processes, leveraging hierarchical parallelism through vectorization and compilation techniques to achieve superior speed and scalability. This design enables the efficient training of large populations on a single machine. In addition to its performance-oriented design, $\texttt{$\textbf{EvoRL}$}$ offers a comprehensive platform for EvoRL research, encompassing implementations of traditional RL algorithms (e.g., A2C, PPO, DDPG, TD3, SAC), Evolutionary Algorithms (e.g., CMA-ES, OpenES, ARS), and hybrid EvoRL paradigms such as Evolutionary-guided RL (e.g., ERL, CEM-RL) and Population-Based AutoRL (e.g., PBT). The framework's modular architecture and user-friendly interface allow researchers to seamlessly integrate new components, customize algorithms, and conduct fair benchmarking and ablation studies. The project is open-source and available at: https://github.com/EMI-Group/evorl.