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Reinforcement learning is a machine learning approach based on behavioral psychology. It is focused on learning agents that can acquire knowledge and learn to carry out new tasks by interacting with the environment. However, a problem…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-12-15 Hugo Muñoz , Ernesto Portugal , Angel Ayala , Bruno Fernandes , Francisco Cruz

Exploration is widely regarded as one of the most challenging aspects of reinforcement learning (RL), with many naive approaches succumbing to exponential sample complexity. To isolate the challenges of exploration, we propose a new…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-10 Chi Jin , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Max Simchowitz , Tiancheng Yu

In reinforcement learning (RL), different reward functions can define the same optimal policy but result in drastically different learning performance. For some, the agent gets stuck with a suboptimal behavior, and for others, it solves the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Grigorii Veviurko , Wendelin Böhmer , Mathijs de Weerdt

In reinforcement learning, an agent interacts sequentially with an environment to maximize a reward, receiving only partial, probabilistic feedback. This creates a fundamental exploration-exploitation trade-off: the agent must explore to…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-03-27 Josep Lumbreras , Ruo Cheng Huang , Yanglin Hu , Marco Fanizza , Mile Gu

A default assumption in the design of reinforcement-learning algorithms is that a decision-making agent always explores to learn optimal behavior. In sufficiently complex environments that approach the vastness and scale of the real world,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-23 Dilip Arumugam , Saurabh Kumar , Ramki Gummadi , Benjamin Van Roy

This paper reviews exploration techniques in deep reinforcement learning. Exploration techniques are of primary importance when solving sparse reward problems. In sparse reward problems, the reward is rare, which means that the agent will…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-03 Pawel Ladosz , Lilian Weng , Minwoo Kim , Hyondong Oh

We introduce exploration potential, a quantity that measures how much a reinforcement learning agent has explored its environment class. In contrast to information gain, exploration potential takes the problem's reward structure into…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-11-21 Jan Leike

In this paper we consider the problem of how a reinforcement learning agent that is tasked with solving a sequence of reinforcement learning problems (a sequence of Markov decision processes) can use knowledge acquired early in its lifetime…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-05 Francisco M. Garcia , Philip S. Thomas

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

Reinforcement learning (RL) involves sequential decision making in uncertain environments. The aim of the decision-making agent is to maximize the benefit of acting in its environment over an extended period of time. Finding an optimal…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Istvan Szita , Balint Takacs , Andras Lorincz

Real-world applications require RL algorithms to act safely. During learning process, it is likely that the agent executes sub-optimal actions that may lead to unsafe/poor states of the system. Exploration is particularly brittle in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-06-17 Elena Smirnova , Elvis Dohmatob , Jérémie Mary

We study the problem of learning exploration-exploitation strategies that effectively adapt to dynamic environments, where the task may change over time. While RNN-based policies could in principle represent such strategies, in practice…

The exploration \& exploitation dilemma poses significant challenges in reinforcement learning (RL). Recently, curiosity-based exploration methods achieved great success in tackling hard-exploration problems. However, they necessitate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-06 Yiran Wang , Chenshu Liu , Yunfan Li , Sanae Amani , Bolei Zhou , Lin F. Yang

Reinforcement learning (RL) has become an increasingly active area of research in recent years. Although there are many algorithms that allow an agent to solve tasks efficiently, they often ignore the possibility that prior experience…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-01-07 Francisco M. Garcia , Chris Nota , Philip S. Thomas

All reinforcement learning algorithms must handle the trade-off between exploration and exploitation. Many state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning methods use noise in the action selection, such as Gaussian noise in policy gradient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-04-05 Trevor Barron , Oliver Obst , Heni Ben Amor

Can deep reinforcement learning algorithms be exploited as solvers for optimal trading strategies? The aim of this work is to test reinforcement learning algorithms on conceptually simple, but mathematically non-trivial, trading…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2020-04-10 Ayman Chaouki , Stephen Hardiman , Christian Schmidt , Emmanuel Sérié , Joachim de Lataillade

Exploration algorithms for reinforcement learning typically replace or augment the reward function with an additional ``intrinsic'' reward that trains the agent to seek previously unseen states of the environment. Here, we consider an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Kevin McKee , Eric Alt , Andrew Grebenisan , Mick van Gelderen , Gary Miguel

Exploration is a crucial and distinctive aspect of reinforcement learning (RL) that remains a fundamental open problem. Several methods have been proposed to tackle this challenge. Commonly used methods inject random noise directly into the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-06 Sebastian Griesbach , Carlo D'Eramo

Finding meaningful and accurate dense rewards is a fundamental task in the field of reinforcement learning (RL) that enables agents to explore environments more efficiently. In traditional RL settings, agents learn optimal policies through…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-12-05 Shuyuan Zhang

Exploration in reinforcement learning (RL) remains an open challenge. RL algorithms rely on observing rewards to train the agent, and if informative rewards are sparse the agent learns slowly or may not learn at all. To improve exploration…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-12 Simone Parisi , Alireza Kazemipour , Michael Bowling