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Reinforcement Learning (RL) serves as a potent paradigm for enhancing reasoning capabilities in Large Language Models (LLMs), yet standard outcome-based approaches often suffer from reward sparsity and inefficient credit assignment. In this…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Xiangwei Wang , Wei Wang , Ken Chen , Nanduni Nimalsiri , Saman Halgamuge

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a central problem in artificial intelligence. This problem consists of defining artificial agents that can learn optimal behaviour by interacting with an environment -- where the optimal behaviour is defined…

Reinforcement learning algorithms describe how an agent can learn an optimal action policy in a sequential decision process, through repeated experience. In a given environment, the agent policy provides him some running and terminal…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-03-24 Arthur Charpentier , Romuald Elie , Carl Remlinger

Reward machines are an established tool for dealing with reinforcement learning problems in which rewards are sparse and depend on complex sequences of actions. However, existing algorithms for learning reward machines assume an overly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-20 Jan Corazza , Ivan Gavran , Daniel Neider

Reward design is a fundamental problem in reinforcement learning (RL). A misspecified or poorly designed reward can result in low sample efficiency and undesired behaviors. In this paper, we propose the idea of programmatic reward design,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-10 Weichao Zhou , Wenchao Li

Temporal credit assignment in reinforcement learning is challenging due to delayed and stochastic outcomes. Monte Carlo targets can bridge long delays between action and consequence but lead to high-variance targets due to stochasticity.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-05 Aditya A. Ramesh , Kenny Young , Louis Kirsch , Jürgen Schmidhuber

The current reward learning from human preferences could be used to resolve complex reinforcement learning (RL) tasks without access to a reward function by defining a single fixed preference between pairs of trajectory segments. However,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-12-29 Zehong Cao , KaiChiu Wong , Chin-Teng Lin

Any reinforcement learning system must be able to identify which past events contributed to observed outcomes, a problem known as credit assignment. A common solution to this problem is to use an eligibility trace to assign credit to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-26 Duncan Bailey , Marcelo G. Mattar

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has improved the reasoning abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) by using rule-based binary feedback. However, current RLVR methods typically assign the same reward to every token.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Guofu Xie , Yunsheng Shi , Hongtao Tian , Ting Yao , Xiao Zhang

In this paper, we propose a reinforcement learning-based algorithm for trajectory optimization for constrained dynamical systems. This problem is motivated by the fact that for most robotic systems, the dynamics may not always be known.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-03-05 Kei Ota , Devesh K. Jha , Tomoaki Oiki , Mamoru Miura , Takashi Nammoto , Daniel Nikovski , Toshisada Mariyama

Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) aims to learn a reward function and a corresponding policy that best fit the demonstrated trajectories of an expert. However, current IRL works cannot learn incrementally from an ongoing trajectory…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-24 Shicheng Liu , Minghui Zhu

Rewards play an essential role in reinforcement learning. In contrast to rule-based game environments with well-defined reward functions, complex real-world robotic applications, such as contact-rich manipulation, lack explicit and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-30 Yuning Wu , Jieliang Luo , Hui Li

Learning to solve complex goal-oriented tasks with sparse terminal-only rewards often requires an enormous number of samples. In such cases, using a set of expert trajectories could help to learn faster. However, Imitation Learning (IL) via…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-19 Sujoy Paul , Jeroen van Baar , Amit K. Roy-Chowdhury

The Credit Assignment Problem (CAP) refers to the longstanding challenge of Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents to associate actions with their long-term consequences. Solving the CAP is a crucial step towards the successful deployment of RL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-08 Eduardo Pignatelli , Johan Ferret , Matthieu Geist , Thomas Mesnard , Hado van Hasselt , Olivier Pietquin , Laura Toni

Reinforcement learning (RL) has been recognized as a powerful tool for robot control tasks. RL typically employs reward functions to define task objectives and guide agent learning. However, since the reward function serves the dual purpose…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-10 Zhao Yu , Xiuping Wu , Liangjun Ke

To achieve the ambitious goals of artificial intelligence, reinforcement learning must include planning with a model of the world that is abstract in state and time. Deep learning has made progress with state abstraction, but temporal…

Value functions are crucial for model-free Reinforcement Learning (RL) to obtain a policy implicitly or guide the policy updates. Value estimation heavily depends on the stochasticity of environmental dynamics and the quality of reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-28 Hongyao Tang , Jianye Hao , Guangyong Chen , Pengfei Chen , Zhaopeng Meng , Yaodong Yang , Li Wang

Most known regret bounds for reinforcement learning are either episodic or assume an environment without traps. We derive a regret bound without making either assumption, by allowing the algorithm to occasionally delegate an action to an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-22 Vanessa Kosoy

A misspecified reward can degrade sample efficiency and induce undesired behaviors in reinforcement learning (RL) problems. We propose symbolic reward machines for incorporating high-level task knowledge when specifying the reward signals.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-04-22 Weichao Zhou , Wenchao Li

Advancements in reinforcement learning have led to the development of sophisticated models capable of learning complex decision-making tasks. However, efficiently integrating world models with decision transformers remains a challenge. In…