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Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a promising approach for solving various control, optimization, and sequential decision making tasks. However, designing reward functions for complex tasks (e.g., with multiple objectives and safety…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-07-23 Xuan Zhao , Marcos Campos

We design a new iterative algorithm, called REINFORCE-OPT, for solving a general type of optimization problems. This algorithm parameterizes the solution search rule and iteratively updates the parameter using a reinforcement learning (RL)…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-27 Chen Xu , Yun-Bin Zhao , Zhipeng Lu , Ye Zhang

Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) is typically formulated as maximizing entropy subject to matching the distribution of expert trajectories. Classical (dual-ascent) IRL guarantees monotonic performance improvement but requires fully…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Anish Diwan , Davide Tateo , Christopher E. Mower , Haitham Bou-Ammar , Jan Peters , Oleg Arenz

Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) algorithms infer a reward function that explains demonstrations provided by an expert acting in the environment. Maximum Causal Entropy (MCE) IRL is currently the most popular formulation of IRL, with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-23 Adam Gleave , Sam Toyer

Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) aims to reconstruct the reward function from expert demonstrations to facilitate policy learning, and has demonstrated its remarkable success in imitation learning. To promote expert-like behavior,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-16 Shunyu Liu , Yunpeng Qing , Shuqi Xu , Hongyan Wu , Jiangtao Zhang , Jingyuan Cong , Tianhao Chen , Yunfu Liu , Mingli Song

In this work, we address the problem of determining reliable policies in reinforcement learning (RL), with a focus on optimization under uncertainty and the need for performance guarantees. While classical RL algorithms aim at maximizing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Nadir Farhi

The problem of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in an unknown nonlinear dynamical system is equivalent to the search for an optimal feedback law utilizing the simulations/ rollouts of the dynamical system. Most RL techniques search over a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-25 Ran Wang , Karthikeya S. Parunandi , Aayushman Sharma , Raman Goyal , Suman Chakravorty

This paper investigates the so-called reward-balancing methods, a novel class of algorithms for solving discounted-return reinforcement learning (RL) problems. These methods consist of iteratively adjusting the reward function to transform…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-23 Simone Baroncini , Bahman Gharesifard , Giuseppe Notarstefano

Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) learns a reward function to explain expert demonstrations. Modern IRL methods often use the adversarial (minimax) formulation that alternates between reward and policy optimization, which often lead to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-14 Yang Chen , Menglin Zou , Jiaqi Zhang , Yitan Zhang , Junyi Yang , Gael Gendron , Libo Zhang , Jiamou Liu , Michael J. Witbrock

This paper presents a method for learning logical task specifications and cost functions from demonstrations. Constructing specifications by hand is challenging for complex objectives and constraints in autonomous systems. Instead, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-21 Tianyu Wang , Nikolay Atanasov

Reinforcement learning (RL) combines a control problem with statistical estimation: The system dynamics are not known to the agent, but can be learned through experience. A recent line of research casts `RL as inference' and suggests a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-05 Brendan O'Donoghue , Ian Osband , Catalin Ionescu

We propose a new approach to inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) based on the deep Gaussian process (deep GP) model, which is capable of learning complicated reward structures with few demonstrations. Our model stacks multiple latent GP…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-05-08 Ming Jin , Andreas Damianou , Pieter Abbeel , Costas Spanos

Envisioned application areas for reinforcement learning (RL) include autonomous driving, precision agriculture, and finance, which all require RL agents to make decisions in the real world. A significant challenge hindering the adoption of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-20 Dominik Baumann , Erfaun Noorani , James Price , Ole Peters , Colm Connaughton , Thomas B. Schön

Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) enables an agent to learn complex behavior by observing demonstrations from a (near-)optimal policy. The typical assumption is that the learner's goal is to match the teacher's demonstrated behavior. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-30 Sebastian Tschiatschek , Ahana Ghosh , Luis Haug , Rati Devidze , Adish Singla

Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) attempts to infer human rewards or preferences from observed behavior. Since human planning systematically deviates from rationality, several approaches have been tried to account for specific human…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-01-14 Stuart Armstrong , Sören Mindermann

Large language models (LLMs) trained with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities, but their underlying reward functions and decision-making processes remain opaque. This paper introduces…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Jared Joselowitz , Ritam Majumdar , Arjun Jagota , Matthieu Bou , Nyal Patel , Satyapriya Krishna , Sonali Parbhoo

Inspired by expert evaluation policy for urban perception, we proposed a novel inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) based framework for predicting urban safety and recovering the corresponding reward function. We also presented a scalable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-29 Yaxuan Wang , Zhixin Zeng , Qijun Zhao

We consider inverse reinforcement learning problems with concave utilities. Concave Utility Reinforcement Learning (CURL) is a generalisation of the standard RL objective, which employs a concave function of the state occupancy measure,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-05 Mustafa Mert Çelikok , Frans A. Oliehoek , Jan-Willem van de Meent

We consider the maximum causal entropy inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) problem for infinite-horizon stationary mean-field games (MFG), in which we model the unknown reward function within a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-06 Berkay Anahtarci , Can Deha Kariksiz , Naci Saldi

Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) for linear systems seeks a cost function whose optimal controller reproduces an expert policy from data. Existing data-driven methods for discrete-time linear systems are largely built on iterative…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-12 Duc Cuong Nguyen , Phuong Nam Dao