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We propose a reinforcement learning agent to solve hard exploration games by learning a range of directed exploratory policies. We construct an episodic memory-based intrinsic reward using k-nearest neighbors over the agent's recent…

A major challenge in reinforcement learning is the design of exploration strategies, especially for environments with sparse reward structures and continuous state and action spaces. Intuitively, if the reinforcement signal is very scarce,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Susan Amin , Maziar Gomrokchi , Hossein Aboutalebi , Harsh Satija , Doina Precup

This paper considers the problem of efficient exploration of unseen environments, a key challenge in AI. We propose a `learning to explore' framework where we learn a policy from a distribution of environments. At test time, presented with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-30 Hanjun Dai , Yujia Li , Chenglong Wang , Rishabh Singh , Po-Sen Huang , Pushmeet Kohli

Modern AAA video games feature huge game levels and maps which are increasingly hard for level testers to cover exhaustively. As a result, games often ship with catastrophic bugs such as the player falling through the floor or being stuck…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-09-02 Cong Lu , Raluca Georgescu , Johan Verwey

Exploration in environments with sparse feedback remains a challenging research problem in reinforcement learning (RL). When the RL agent explores the environment randomly, it results in low exploration efficiency, especially in robotic…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-11-19 Boyao Li , Tao Lu , Jiayi Li , Ning Lu , Yinghao Cai , Shuo Wang

We introduce Random Latent Exploration (RLE), a simple yet effective exploration strategy in reinforcement learning (RL). On average, RLE outperforms noise-based methods, which perturb the agent's actions, and bonus-based exploration, which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-28 Srinath Mahankali , Zhang-Wei Hong , Ayush Sekhari , Alexander Rakhlin , Pulkit Agrawal

Reinforcement learning is a widely used approach to autonomous navigation, showing potential in various tasks and robotic setups. Still, it often struggles to reach distant goals when safety constraints are imposed (e.g., the wheeled robot…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-08-27 Brian Angulo , Gregory Gorbov , Aleksandr Panov , Konstantin Yakovlev

A fundamental issue in reinforcement learning algorithms is the balance between exploration of the environment and exploitation of information already obtained by the agent. Especially, exploration has played a critical role for both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-29 Ruihan Yang , Qiwei Ye , Tie-Yan Liu

Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning (GCRL) provides a versatile framework for developing unified controllers capable of handling wide ranges of tasks, exploring environments, and adapting behaviors. However, its reliance on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-20 Charly Pecqueux-Guézénec , Stéphane Doncieux , Nicolas Perrin-Gilbert

Reinforcement learning offers the promise of automating the acquisition of complex behavioral skills. However, compared to commonly used and well-understood supervised learning methods, reinforcement learning algorithms can be brittle,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-01 Aviral Kumar , Xue Bin Peng , Sergey Levine

In this work, we take a first step toward elucidating the mechanisms behind emergent exploration in unsupervised reinforcement learning. We study Single-Goal Contrastive Reinforcement Learning (SGCRL), a self-supervised algorithm capable of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-17 Mahsa Bastankhah , Grace Liu , Dilip Arumugam , Thomas L. Griffiths , Benjamin Eysenbach

Deep reinforcement learning methods traditionally struggle with tasks where environment rewards are particularly sparse. One successful method of guiding exploration in these domains is to imitate trajectories provided by a human…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-03 Yusuf Aytar , Tobias Pfaff , David Budden , Tom Le Paine , Ziyu Wang , Nando de Freitas

The exploration-exploitation dilemma has been an intriguing and unsolved problem within the framework of reinforcement learning. "Optimism in the face of uncertainty" and model building play central roles in advanced exploration methods.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2008-10-21 István Szita , András Lőrincz

Reinforcement learning algorithms rely on carefully engineering environment rewards that are extrinsic to the agent. However, annotating each environment with hand-designed, dense rewards is not scalable, motivating the need for developing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-08-14 Yuri Burda , Harri Edwards , Deepak Pathak , Amos Storkey , Trevor Darrell , Alexei A. Efros

Solving real-life sequential decision making problems under partial observability involves an exploration-exploitation problem. To be successful, an agent needs to efficiently gather valuable information about the state of the world for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-03 Haiyan Yin , Yingzhen Li , Sinno Jialin Pan , Cheng Zhang , Sebastian Tschiatschek

In this study, we address the problem of efficient exploration in reinforcement learning. Most common exploration approaches depend on random action selection, however these approaches do not work well in environments with sparse or no…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-30 Doğay Kamar , Nazım Kemal Üre , Gözde Ünal

Robotic grasping is a crucial area of research as it can result in the acceleration of the automation of several Industries utilizing robots ranging from manufacturing to healthcare. Reinforcement learning is the field of study where an…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-01-14 Raghav Nagpal , Achyuthan Unni Krishnan , Hanshen Yu

In this paper, we introduce Latent Go-Explore (LGE), a simple and general approach based on the Go-Explore paradigm for exploration in reinforcement learning (RL). Go-Explore was initially introduced with a strong domain knowledge…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-28 Quentin Gallouédec , Emmanuel Dellandréa

Reinforcement learning with sparse rewards is still an open challenge. Classic methods rely on getting feedback via extrinsic rewards to train the agent, and in situations where this occurs very rarely the agent learns slowly or cannot…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-04 Simone Parisi , Davide Tateo , Maximilian Hensel , Carlo D'Eramo , Jan Peters , Joni Pajarinen

The ability of artificial agents to increment their capabilities when confronted with new data is an open challenge in artificial intelligence. The main challenge faced in such cases is catastrophic forgetting, i.e., the tendency of neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-16 Eden Belouadah , Adrian Popescu , Ioannis Kanellos