Related papers: Sparse Reward Exploration via Novelty Search and E…
Efficient exploration is a long-standing problem in reinforcement learning since extrinsic rewards are usually sparse or missing. A popular solution to this issue is to feed an agent with novelty signals as intrinsic rewards. In this work,…
Using Neuroevolution combined with Novelty Search to promote behavioural diversity is capable of constructing high-performing ensembles for classification. However, using gradient descent to train evolved architectures during the search can…
Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) offer a promising alternative to Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) for deep learning applications, particularly in resource-constrained systems. This is largely due to their inherent sparsity, influenced by…
Autonomous experiments (AEs) are transforming how scientific research is conducted by integrating artificial intelligence with automated experimental platforms. Current AEs primarily focus on the optimization of a predefined target; while…
The {\it straight-through estimator} (STE) is commonly used to optimize quantized neural networks, yet its contexts of effective performance are still unclear despite empirical successes.To make a step forward in this comprehension, we…
We propose Deep Q-Networks (DQN) with model-based exploration, an algorithm combining both model-free and model-based approaches that explores better and learns environments with sparse rewards more efficiently. DQN is a general-purpose,…
Solving tasks with sparse rewards is one of the most important challenges in reinforcement learning. In the single-agent setting, this challenge is addressed by introducing intrinsic rewards that motivate agents to explore unseen regions of…
We propose a novel sparse preference learning/ranking algorithm. Our algorithm approximates the true utility function by a weighted sum of basis functions using the squared loss on pairs of data points, and is a generalization of the kernel…
Exploration bonuses in reinforcement learning guide long-horizon exploration by defining custom intrinsic objectives. Several exploration objectives like count-based bonuses, pseudo-counts, and state-entropy maximization are non-stationary…
Reinforcement Learning has emerged as a strong alternative to solve optimization tasks efficiently. The use of these algorithms highly depends on the feedback signals provided by the environment in charge of informing about how good (or…
We propose a sparsity-aware evolutionary (SAE) framework for model merging that involves iterative pruning-merging cycles to act as a novel mutation operator. We incorporate the sparsity constraints into the score function, which steers the…
Dealing with environments with sparse rewards has always been crucial for systems developed to operate in autonomous open-ended learning settings. Intrinsic Motivations could be an effective way to help Deep Reinforcement Learning…
We present a new computing model for intrinsic rewards in reinforcement learning that addresses the limitations of existing surprise-driven explorations. The reward is the novelty of the surprise rather than the surprise norm. We estimate…
Deep reinforcement learning in partially observable environments is a difficult task in itself, and can be further complicated by a sparse reward signal. Most tasks involving navigation in three-dimensional environments provide the agent…
The most data-efficient algorithms for reinforcement learning in robotics are model-based policy search algorithms, which alternate between learning a dynamical model of the robot and optimizing a policy to maximize the expected return…
In structured output prediction tasks, labeling ground-truth training output is often expensive. However, for many tasks, even when the true output is unknown, we can evaluate predictions using a scalar reward function, which may be easily…
Efficient exploration remains a challenging problem in reinforcement learning, especially for those tasks where rewards from environments are sparse. A commonly used approach for exploring such environments is to introduce some "intrinsic"…
Reinforcement learning in sparse-reward navigation environments with expensive and limited interactions is challenging and poses a need for effective exploration. Motivated by complex navigation tasks that require real-world training (when…
Sparse neural networks have shown similar or better generalization performance than their dense counterparts while having higher parameter efficiency. This has motivated a number of works to learn or search for high performing sparse…
Sparse rewards pose a significant challenge to achieving high sample efficiency in goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (RL). Specifically, in sequential manipulation tasks, the agent receives failure rewards until it successfully…