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In some agent designs like inverse reinforcement learning an agent needs to learn its own reward function. Learning the reward function and optimising for it are typically two different processes, usually performed at different stages. We…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-04-29 Stuart Armstrong , Jan Leike , Laurent Orseau , Shane Legg

To date, distributional reinforcement learning (distributional RL) methods have exclusively focused on the discounted setting, where an agent aims to optimize a discounted sum of rewards over time. In this work, we extend distributional RL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-14 Juan Sebastian Rojas , Chi-Guhn Lee

The selection of a reward function in Reinforcement Learning (RL) has garnered significant attention because of its impact on system performance. Issues of significant steady-state errors often manifest when quadratic reward functions are…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-04-02 Liyao Wang , Zishun Zheng , Yuan Lin

We study a class of reinforcement learning problems where the reward signals for policy learning are generated by an internal reward model that is dependent on and jointly optimized with the policy. This interdependence between the policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-28 Mengdi Li , Xufeng Zhao , Jae Hee Lee , Cornelius Weber , Stefan Wermter

This paper presents an interpretable reward design framework for reinforcement learning based constrained optimal control problems with state and terminal constraints. The problem is formalized within a standard partially observable Markov…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-05 Jingjie Ni , Fangfei Li , Xin Jin , Xianlun Peng , Yang Tang

Decision-Focused Learning (DFL) is an emerging learning paradigm that tackles the task of training a machine learning (ML) model to predict missing parameters of an incomplete optimization problem, where the missing parameters are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-23 Yehya Farhat

We consider the problem of quantifying uncertainty over expected cumulative rewards in model-based reinforcement learning. In particular, we focus on characterizing the variance over values induced by a distribution over MDPs. Previous work…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-08 Carlos E. Luis , Alessandro G. Bottero , Julia Vinogradska , Felix Berkenkamp , Jan Peters

Reinforcement learning (RL) commonly relies on scalar rewards with limited ability to express temporal, conditional, or safety-critical goals, and can lead to reward hacking. Temporal logic expressible via the more general class of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-26 Dominik Wagner , Leon Witzman , Luke Ong

Solving a reinforcement learning problem typically involves correctly prespecifying the reward signal from which the algorithm learns. Here, we approach the problem of reward signal design by using an evolutionary approach to perform a…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2021-05-19 Rafal Muszynski , Katja Hofmann , Jun Wang

In reinforcement learning, the discount factor $\gamma$ controls the agent's effective planning horizon. Traditionally, this parameter was considered part of the MDP; however, as deep reinforcement learning algorithms tend to become…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-24 Chen Tessler , Shie Mannor

We study the reward-free reinforcement learning framework, which is particularly suitable for batch reinforcement learning and scenarios where one needs policies for multiple reward functions. This framework has two phases. In the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-26 Zihan Zhang , Simon S. Du , Xiangyang Ji

One of the challenges in applying reinforcement learning in a complex real-world environment lies in providing the agent with a sufficiently detailed reward function. Any misalignment between the reward and the desired behavior can result…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-24 Neta Glazer , Aviv Navon , Aviv Shamsian , Ethan Fetaya

There are situations in which an agent should receive rewards only after having accomplished a series of previous tasks. In other words, the reward that the agent receives is non-Markovian. One natural and quite general way to represent…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-01-28 Gavin Rens , Jean-François Raskin

While many real-world problems that might benefit from reinforcement learning, these problems rarely fit into the MDP mold: interacting with the environment is often expensive and specifying reward functions is challenging. Motivated by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-26 Kyle Hatch , Benjamin Eysenbach , Rafael Rafailov , Tianhe Yu , Ruslan Salakhutdinov , Sergey Levine , Chelsea Finn

The alignment of Large Language Models (LLMs) is critically dependent on reward models trained on costly human preference data. While recent work explores bypassing this cost with AI feedback, these methods often lack a rigorous theoretical…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-01 Yi-Chen Li , Tian Xu , Yang Yu , Xuqin Zhang , Xiong-Hui Chen , Zhongxiang Ling , Ningjing Chao , Lei Yuan , Zhi-Hua Zhou

Model-based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) holds promise for data-efficiency by planning with model-generated experience in addition to learning with experience from the environment. However, in complex or changing environments, models in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-24 Esra'a Saleh , John D. Martin , Anna Koop , Arash Pourzarabi , Michael Bowling

The optimal objective is a fundamental aspect of reinforcement learning (RL), as it determines how policies are evaluated and optimized. While total return maximization is the ideal objective in RL, discounted return maximization is the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-19 Shuyu Yin , Fei Wen , Peilin Liu , Tao Luo

Model-free algorithms are brought into the control system's research with the emergence of reinforcement learning algorithms. However, there are two practical challenges of reinforcement learning-based methods. First, learning by…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-18 Mi Zhou , Erik Verriest , Chaouki Abdallah

As machine learning models become more capable, they have exhibited increased potential in solving complex tasks. One of the most promising directions uses deep reinforcement learning to train autonomous agents in computer network defense…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-23 Elizabeth Bates , Vasilios Mavroudis , Chris Hicks

Inverse reinforcement learning is the problem of inferring a reward function from an optimal policy or demonstrations by an expert. In this work, it is assumed that the reward is expressed as a reward machine whose transitions depend on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-23 Mohamad Louai Shehab , Antoine Aspeel , Necmiye Ozay