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Related papers: HAC Explore: Accelerating Exploration with Hierarc…

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Hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL) effectively improves agents' exploration efficiency on tasks with sparse reward, with the guide of high-quality hierarchical structures (e.g., subgoals or options). However, how to automatically…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-14 Shaohui Peng , Xing Hu , Rui Zhang , Ke Tang , Jiaming Guo , Qi Yi , Ruizhi Chen , Xishan Zhang , Zidong Du , Ling Li , Qi Guo , Yunji Chen

Exploration with sparse rewards remains a challenging research problem in reinforcement learning (RL). Especially for sequential object manipulation tasks, the RL agent always receives negative rewards until completing all sub-tasks, which…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-04 Yongle Luo , Yuxin Wang , Kun Dong , Qiang Zhang , Erkang Cheng , Zhiyong Sun , Bo Song

Feature selection aims to preprocess the target dataset, find an optimal and most streamlined feature subset, and enhance the downstream machine learning task. Among filter, wrapper, and embedded-based approaches, the reinforcement learning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-09-17 Weiliang Zhang , Xiaohan Huang , Yi Du , Ziyue Qiao , Qingqing Long , Zhen Meng , Yuanchun Zhou , Meng Xiao

The use of skills (a.k.a., options) can greatly accelerate exploration in reinforcement learning, especially when only sparse reward signals are available. While option discovery methods have been proposed for individual agents, in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-22 Jiayu Chen , Marina Haliem , Tian Lan , Vaneet Aggarwal

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…

Reinforcement Learning (RL) with rubric-based rewards has recently shown remarkable progress in enhancing general reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), yet still suffers from ineffective exploration confined to curent…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-23 Wenjian Zhang , Kongcheng Zhang , Jiaxin Qi , Baisheng Lai , Jianqiang Huang

In multi-goal reinforcement learning (RL) settings, the reward for each goal is sparse, and located in a small neighborhood of the goal. In large dimension, the probability of reaching a reward vanishes and the agent receives little…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-17 Léonard Blier , Yann Ollivier

Reinforcement learning (RL) has become an effective approach for advancing the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) through the strategic integration of external search engines. However, current RL-based search agents…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-10 Chuzhan Hao , Wenfeng Feng , Guochao Jiang , Guofeng Quan , Guohua Liu , Yuewei Zhang

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

Conventional video summarization approaches based on reinforcement learning have the problem that the reward can only be received after the whole summary is generated. Such kind of reward is sparse and it makes reinforcement learning hard…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2020-03-03 Yiyan Chen , Li Tao , Xueting Wang , Toshihiko Yamasaki

Recent advancements in reinforcement learning have made significant impacts across various domains, yet they often struggle in complex multi-agent environments due to issues like algorithm instability, low sampling efficiency, and the…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2024-08-22 Cheng Xu , Changtian Zhang , Yuchen Shi , Ran Wang , Shihong Duan , Yadong Wan , Xiaotong Zhang

Exploration and credit assignment under sparse rewards are still challenging problems. We argue that these challenges arise in part due to the intrinsic rigidity of operating at the level of actions. Actions can precisely define how to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-02-23 Oriol Corcoll , Raul Vicente

Balancing exploration and exploitation remains a key challenge in reinforcement learning (RL). State-of-the-art RL algorithms suffer from high sample complexity, particularly in the sparse reward case, where they can do no better than to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-22 Philippe Morere , Gilad Francis , Tom Blau , Fabio Ramos

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) enables robots to perform some intelligent tasks end-to-end. However, there are still many challenges for long-horizon sparse-reward robotic manipulator tasks. On the one hand, a sparse-reward setting…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-12-07 Guangming Wang , Minjian Xin , Wenhua Wu , Zhe Liu , Hesheng Wang

This paper presents a novel form of policy gradient for model-free reinforcement learning (RL) with improved exploration properties. Current policy-based methods use entropy regularization to encourage undirected exploration of the reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-03-17 Ofir Nachum , Mohammad Norouzi , Dale Schuurmans

Bugs in popular distributed protocol implementations have been the source of many downtimes in popular internet services. We describe a randomized testing approach for distributed protocol implementations based on reinforcement learning.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-09-05 Andrea Borgarelli , Constantin Enea , Rupak Majumdar , Srinidhi Nagendra

Multi-agent hierarchical reinforcement learning (MAHRL) has been studied as an effective means to solve intelligent decision problems in complex and large-scale environments. However, most current MAHRL algorithms follow the traditional way…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Chanjuan Liu , Jinmiao Cong , Bingcai Chen , Yaochu Jin , Enqiang Zhu

This work pushes the boundaries of learning-based methods in autonomous robot exploration in terms of environmental scale and exploration efficiency. We present HEADER, an attention-based reinforcement learning approach with hierarchical…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-10-20 Yuhong Cao , Yizhuo Wang , Jingsong Liang , Shuhao Liao , Yifeng Zhang , Peizhuo Li , Guillaume Sartoretti

Hierarchical reinforcement learning has demonstrated significant success at solving difficult reinforcement learning (RL) tasks. Previous works have motivated the use of hierarchy by appealing to a number of intuitive benefits, including…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-01 Ofir Nachum , Haoran Tang , Xingyu Lu , Shixiang Gu , Honglak Lee , Sergey Levine

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-17 Matvey Gerasyov , Ilya Makarov