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Multi-task representation learning (MTRL) is an approach that learns shared latent representations across related tasks, facilitating collaborative learning that improves the overall learning efficiency. This paper studies MTRL for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Yaoze Guo , Shana Moothedath

Model-based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) aims to make agents more sample-efficient, adaptive, and explainable by learning an explicit model of the environment. While the capabilities of MBRL agents have significantly improved in recent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-09 Ran Wei , Nathan Lambert , Anthony McDonald , Alfredo Garcia , Roberto Calandra

Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) is believed to have higher sample efficiency compared with model-free reinforcement learning (MFRL). However, MBRL is plagued by dynamics bottleneck dilemma. Dynamics bottleneck dilemma is the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-25 Xiyao Wang , Junge Zhang , Wenzhen Huang , Qiyue Yin

In reinforcement learning (RL), agents continually interact with the environment and use the feedback to refine their behavior. To guide policy optimization, reward models are introduced as proxies of the desired objectives, such that when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-19 Rui Yu , Shenghua Wan , Yucen Wang , Chen-Xiao Gao , Le Gan , Zongzhang Zhang , De-Chuan Zhan

Simulating trajectories of virtual crowds is a commonly encountered task in Computer Graphics. Several recent works have applied Reinforcement Learning methods to animate virtual agents, however they often make different design choices when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-21 Ariel Kwiatkowski , Vicky Kalogeiton , Julien Pettré , Marie-Paule Cani

Efficiently tackling multiple tasks within complex environment, such as those found in robot manipulation, remains an ongoing challenge in robotics and an opportunity for data-driven solutions, such as reinforcement learning (RL).…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-04-03 Carlos Plou , Ana C. Murillo , Ruben Martinez-Cantin

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

Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate transformative potential, yet their reasoning remains inconsistent and unreliable. Reinforcement learning (RL)-based fine-tuning is a key mechanism for improvement, but its effectiveness is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-11 Pei-Chi Pan , Yingbin Liang , Sen Lin

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful approach to complex decision making. However, one issue that limits its practical application is its brittleness, sometimes failing to train in the presence of small changes in the environment.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-27 Jung-Hoon Cho , Vindula Jayawardana , Sirui Li , Cathy Wu

Top-performing Model-Based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) agents, such as Dreamer, learn the world model by reconstructing the image observations. Hence, they often fail to discard task-irrelevant details and struggle to handle visual…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-28 Fei Deng , Ingook Jang , Sungjin Ahn

Preference-based Reinforcement Learning (PbRL) is a paradigm in which an RL agent learns to optimize a task using pair-wise preference-based feedback over trajectories, rather than explicit reward signals. While PbRL has demonstrated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-18 Wenhao Zhan , Masatoshi Uehara , Wen Sun , Jason D. Lee

Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) is a sample efficient technique to obtain control policies, yet unavoidable modeling errors often lead performance deterioration. The model in MBRL is often solely fitted to reconstruct dynamics,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Claas Voelcker , Victor Liao , Animesh Garg , Amir-massoud Farahmand

We study the use of inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) as a tool for the recognition of agents' behavior on the basis of observation of their sequential decision behavior interacting with the environment. We model the problem faced by the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-03-22 Qifeng Qiao , Peter A. Beling

Preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) aligns a robot behavior with human preferences via a reward function learned from binary feedback over agent behaviors. We show that dynamics-aware reward functions improve the sample…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-02-29 Katherine Metcalf , Miguel Sarabia , Natalie Mackraz , Barry-John Theobald

Learning physical dynamics in a series of non-stationary environments is a challenging but essential task for model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) with visual inputs. It requires the agent to consistently adapt to novel tasks without…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-08 Minting Pan , Wendong Zhang , Geng Chen , Xiangming Zhu , Siyu Gao , Yunbo Wang , Xiaokang Yang

This paper investigates search in model-based reinforcement learning (RL). Conventional wisdom holds that long-term predictions and compounding errors are the primary obstacles for model-based RL. We challenge this view, showing that search…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Wei-Di Chang , Mikael Henaff , Brandon Amos , Gregory Dudek , Scott Fujimoto

The potential of reinforcement learning (RL) to deliver aligned and performant agents is partially bottlenecked by the reward engineering problem. One alternative to heuristic trial-and-error is preference-based RL (PbRL), where a reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-22 Tom Bewley , Freddy Lecue

Many methods for Model-based Reinforcement learning (MBRL) in Markov decision processes (MDPs) provide guarantees for both the accuracy of the model they can deliver and the learning efficiency. At the same time, state abstraction…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-16 Rolf A. N. Starre , Marco Loog , Elena Congeduti , Frans A. Oliehoek

This paper considers the problem of learning a model in model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL). We examine how the planning module of an MBRL algorithm uses the model, and propose that the model learning module should incorporate the way…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-01-05 Romina Abachi , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Amir-massoud Farahmand

When an agent cannot represent a perfectly accurate model of its environment's dynamics, model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) can fail catastrophically. Planning involves composing the predictions of the model; when flawed predictions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-07-28 Erik Talvitie