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We consider the problem of reward learning for temporally extended tasks. For reward learning, inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) is a widely used paradigm. Given a Markov decision process (MDP) and a set of demonstrations for a task, IRL…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-07-14 Farzan Memarian , Zhe Xu , Bo Wu , Min Wen , Ufuk Topcu

In human-in-the-loop reinforcement learning or environments where calculating a reward is expensive, the costly rewards can make learning efficiency challenging to achieve. The cost of obtaining feedback from humans or calculating expensive…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-03 Muhammed Yusuf Satici , David L. Roberts

The field of social robotics will likely need to depart from a paradigm of designed behaviours and imitation learning and adopt modern reinforcement learning (RL) methods to enable robots to interact fluidly and efficaciously with humans.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-02-02 Thomas Kingsford

Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) is the problem of finding a reward function which describes observed/known expert behavior. The IRL setting is remarkably useful for automated control, in situations where the reward function is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-12 Gregory Dexter , Kevin Bello , Jean Honorio

To perform robot manipulation tasks, a low-dimensional state of the environment typically needs to be estimated. However, designing a state estimator can sometimes be difficult, especially in environments with deformable objects. An…

Robotics · Computer Science 2019-07-16 Xingyu Lin , Harjatin Singh Baweja , David Held

The goal of inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) is to infer a reward function that explains the behavior of an agent performing a task. The assumption that most approaches make is that the demonstrated behavior is near-optimal. In many…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-20 Luis Haug , Ivan Ovinnikov , Eugene Bykovets

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has become a key factor in aligning model behavior with users' goals. However, while humans integrate multiple strategies when making decisions, current RLHF approaches often simplify this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-19 Mingkang Wu , Devin White , Evelyn Rose , Vernon Lawhern , Nicholas R Waytowich , Yongcan Cao

Many manipulation tasks require robots to interact with unknown environments. In such applications, the ability to adapt the impedance according to different task phases and environment constraints is crucial for safety and performance.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-02-16 Xiang Zhang , Liting Sun , Zhian Kuang , Masayoshi Tomizuka

The effectiveness of reinforcement learning (RL) agents in continuous control robotics tasks is mainly dependent on the design of the underlying reward function, which is highly prone to reward hacking. A misalignment between the reward…

Learning from human feedback is a popular approach to train robots to adapt to user preferences and improve safety. Existing approaches typically consider a single querying (interaction) format when seeking human feedback and do not…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-01-16 Yashwanthi Anand , Nnamdi Nwagwu , Kevin Sabbe , Naomi T. Fitter , Sandhya Saisubramanian

This work handles the inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) problem where only a small number of demonstrations are available from a demonstrator for each high-dimensional task, insufficient to estimate an accurate reward function. Observing…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-10-16 Kun Li , Joel W. Burdick

Reward shaping is an effective technique for incorporating domain knowledge into reinforcement learning (RL). Existing approaches such as potential-based reward shaping normally make full use of a given shaping reward function. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-06 Yujing Hu , Weixun Wang , Hangtian Jia , Yixiang Wang , Yingfeng Chen , Jianye Hao , Feng Wu , Changjie Fan

Humans can leverage physical interaction to teach robot arms. This physical interaction takes multiple forms depending on the task, the user, and what the robot has learned so far. State-of-the-art approaches focus on learning from a single…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-01-11 Shaunak A. Mehta , Dylan P. Losey

Reinforcement learning (RL) methods usually treat reward functions as black boxes. As such, these methods must extensively interact with the environment in order to discover rewards and optimal policies. In most RL applications, however,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-19 Rodrigo Toro Icarte , Toryn Q. Klassen , Richard Valenzano , Sheila A. McIlraith

Learning from human feedback has shown to be a useful approach in acquiring robot reward functions. However, expert feedback is often assumed to be drawn from an underlying unimodal reward function. This assumption does not always hold…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-20 Vivek Myers , Erdem Bıyık , Nima Anari , Dorsa Sadigh

Our goal is for agents to optimize the right reward function, despite how difficult it is for us to specify what that is. Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) enables us to infer reward functions from demonstrations, but it usually assumes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-25 Rohin Shah , Noah Gundotra , Pieter Abbeel , Anca D. Dragan

Conventional reinforcement learning (RL) ap proaches often struggle to learn effective policies under sparse reward conditions, necessitating the manual design of complex, task-specific reward functions. To address this limitation, rein…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-12-15 Suzie Kim , Hye-Bin Shin , Seong-Whan Lee

A well-defined reward function is crucial for successful training of an reinforcement learning (RL) agent. However, defining a suitable reward function is a notoriously challenging task, especially in complex, multi-objective environments.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-08-31 Jasmina Gajcin , James McCarthy , Rahul Nair , Radu Marinescu , Elizabeth Daly , Ivana Dusparic

Aligning human preference and value is an important requirement for contemporary foundation models. State-of-the-art techniques such as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) often consist of two stages: 1) supervised fine-tuning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-10-29 Jiaxiang Li , Siliang Zeng , Hoi-To Wai , Chenliang Li , Alfredo Garcia , Mingyi Hong

Reward design remains a significant bottleneck in applying reinforcement learning (RL) to real-world problems. A popular alternative is reward learning, where reward functions are inferred from human feedback rather than manually specified.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-16 Chaitanya Kharyal , Calarina Muslimani , Matthew E. Taylor