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In model-based reinforcement learning it is typical to decouple the problems of learning the dynamics model and learning the reward function. However, when the dynamics model is flawed, it may generate erroneous states that would never…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-12 Erik Talvitie

One of the fundamental challenges in reinforcement learning (RL) is the one of data efficiency: modern algorithms require a very large number of training samples, especially compared to humans, for solving environments with high-dimensional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-10 Hlynur Davíð Hlynsson , Laurenz Wiskott

With the increasing availability of traffic data and advance of deep reinforcement learning techniques, there is an emerging trend of employing reinforcement learning (RL) for traffic signal control. A key question for applying RL to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-14 Guanjie Zheng , Xinshi Zang , Nan Xu , Hua Wei , Zhengyao Yu , Vikash Gayah , Kai Xu , Zhenhui Li

Enabling a high-degree-of-freedom robot to learn specific skills is a challenging task due to the complexity of robotic dynamics. Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a promising solution; however, addressing such problems requires…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Changxin Huang , Junyang Liang , Yanbin Chang , Jingzhao Xu , Jianqiang Li

AI methods are used in societally important settings, ranging from credit to employment to housing, and it is crucial to provide fairness in regard to algorithmic decision making. Moreover, many settings are dynamic, with populations…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-09 Zhun Deng , He Sun , Zhiwei Steven Wu , Linjun Zhang , David C. Parkes

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a dominant paradigm for improving the reasoning abilities of large language models, yet its effectiveness varies across tasks and compute budgets. We propose a \emph{relative-budget} theory explaining this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Akifumi Wachi , Hirota Kinoshita , Shokichi Takakura , Rei Higuchi , Taiji Suzuki

Dealing with sparse rewards is one of the biggest challenges in Reinforcement Learning (RL). We present a novel technique called Hindsight Experience Replay which allows sample-efficient learning from rewards which are sparse and binary and…

Prior work in multi-objective reinforcement learning typically uses linear reward scalarization with fixed weights, which provably fails to capture non-convex Pareto fronts and thus yields suboptimal results. This limitation becomes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-01 Yining Lu , Zilong Wang , Shiyang Li , Xin Liu , Changlong Yu , Qingyu Yin , Zhan Shi , Zixuan Zhang , Meng Jiang

Reinforcement learning (RL) has become a standard approach for post-training large language models and, more recently, for improving image generation models, which uses reward functions to enhance generation quality and human preference…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2026-01-08 Yunqi Hong , Kuei-Chun Kao , Hengguang Zhou , Cho-Jui Hsieh

Tasks involving high-risk-high-return (HRHR) actions, such as obstacle crossing, often exhibit multimodal action distributions and stochastic returns. Most reinforcement learning (RL) methods assume unimodal Gaussian policies and rely on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Jundong Zhang , Yuhui Situ , Fanji Zhang , Rongji Deng , Tianqi Wei

Large language models are typically aligned with human preferences by optimizing $\textit{reward models}$ (RMs) fitted to human feedback. However, human preferences are multi-faceted, and it is increasingly common to derive reward from a…

Contemporary reinforcement learning with verifiable reward methods post-train language models on multi-step reasoning by assigning a single outcome reward uniformly across all tokens in a trajectory. Such uniform assignment ignores which…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Ankur Samanta , Akshayaa Magesh , Ayush Jain , Youliang Yu , Daniel Jiang , Kavosh Asadi , Kaveh Hassani , Paul Sajda , Jalaj Bhandari , Yonathan Efroni

In tabular multi-agent reinforcement learning with average-cost criterion, a team of agents sequentially interacts with the environment and observes local incentives. We focus on the case that the global reward is a sum of local rewards,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-10-26 Alec Koppel , Amrit Singh Bedi , Bhargav Ganguly , Vaneet Aggarwal

We propose an automata-theoretic approach for reinforcement learning (RL) under complex spatio-temporal constraints with time windows. The problem is formulated using a Markov decision process under a bounded temporal logic constraint.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-08-01 Xiaoshan Lin , Abbasali Koochakzadeh , Yasin Yazicioglu , Derya Aksaray

Reinforcement Learning (RL) suffers from sample inefficiency in sparse reward domains, and the problem is further pronounced in case of stochastic transitions. To improve the sample efficiency, reward shaping is a well-studied approach to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-10 Siddhant Bhambri , Amrita Bhattacharjee , Durgesh Kalwar , Lin Guan , Huan Liu , Subbarao Kambhampati

Reinforcement learning agents are fundamentally limited by the quality of the reward functions they learn from, yet reward design is often overlooked under the assumption that a well-defined reward is readily available. However, in…

To rapidly learn a new task, it is often essential for agents to explore efficiently -- especially when performance matters from the first timestep. One way to learn such behaviour is via meta-learning. Many existing methods however rely on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-11 Luisa Zintgraf , Leo Feng , Cong Lu , Maximilian Igl , Kristian Hartikainen , Katja Hofmann , Shimon Whiteson

The problem of continual learning in the domain of reinforcement learning, often called non-stationary reinforcement learning, has been identified as an important challenge to the application of reinforcement learning. We prove a worst-case…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-14 Christos Papadimitriou , Binghui Peng

Model-based reinforcement learning (RL) is more sample efficient than model-free RL by using imaginary trajectories generated by the learned dynamics model. When the model is inaccurate or biased, imaginary trajectories may be deleterious…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-12 Wenzhen Huang , Qiyue Yin , Junge Zhang , Kaiqi Huang

Designing an effective reward function has long been a challenge in reinforcement learning, particularly for complex tasks in unstructured environments. To address this, various learning paradigms have emerged that leverage different forms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-29 Muhammad Qasim Elahi , Somtochukwu Oguchienti , Maheed H. Ahmed , Mahsa Ghasemi