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Can Differentiable Simulators Give Better Policy Gradients? ICLR 2026 Paper Proposes DDCG and IVW-H

An ICLR 2026 paper re-examines the question of whether differentiable simulators can give better policy gradients, arguing that bias from discontinuous dynamics is not the main obstacle. The authors propose DDCG, a lightweight test that switches estimators in nonsmooth regions; it requires only one hyperparameter and remains reliable with small samples. They also propose IVW-H, a per-step inverse-variance implementation that stabilizes variance in differentiable robot control tasks without explicit discontinuity detection. The paper concludes that estimator switching can improve robustness in controlled experiments, while in real deployment variance control is often more critical.

Part of the event: ICLR 2026 Paper Proposes DDCG and IVW-H Policy Gradient Methods

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