Related papers: Learning in Sparse Rewards settings through Qualit…
Reinforcement learning (RL) has been proven to be an effective and robust method for training neural machine translation systems, especially when paired with powerful reward models that accurately assess translation quality. However, most…
Reinforcement learning agents need a reward signal to learn successful policies. When this signal is sparse or the corresponding gradient is deceptive, such agents need a dedicated mechanism to efficiently explore their search space without…
Meta reinforcement learning (meta-RL) extracts knowledge from previous tasks and achieves fast adaptation to new tasks. Despite recent progress, efficient exploration in meta-RL remains a key challenge in sparse-reward tasks, as it requires…
To convey desired behavior to a Reinforcement Learning (RL) agent, a designer must choose a reward function for the environment, arguably the most important knob designers have in interacting with RL agents. Although many reward functions…
We address the problem of Bayesian reinforcement learning using efficient model-based online planning. We propose an optimism-free Bayes-adaptive algorithm to induce deeper and sparser exploration with a theoretical bound on its performance…
With reinforcement learning, an agent could learn complex behaviors from high-level abstractions of the task. However, exploration and reward shaping remained challenging for existing methods, especially in scenarios where the extrinsic…
Learning to imitate expert behavior from demonstrations can be challenging, especially in environments with high-dimensional, continuous observations and unknown dynamics. Supervised learning methods based on behavioral cloning (BC) suffer…
Reinforcement learning (RL) post-training has enabled newer capabilities in models, such as agentic tool-use for search. However, these models struggle primarily due to limitations with sparse outcome-based rewards and a lack of training…
Sparse reward problems are one of the biggest challenges in Reinforcement Learning. Goal-directed tasks are one such sparse reward problems where a reward signal is received only when the goal is reached. One promising way to train an agent…
This paper addresses the challenge of navigation in large, visually complex environments with sparse rewards. We propose a method that uses object-oriented macro actions grounded in a topological map, allowing a simple Deep Q-Network (DQN)…
Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL) exploits temporally extended actions, or options, to make decisions from a higher-dimensional perspective to alleviate the sparse reward problem, one of the most challenging problems in…
Recent studies have shown that reinforcement learning (RL) models are vulnerable in various noisy scenarios. For instance, the observed reward channel is often subject to noise in practice (e.g., when rewards are collected through sensors),…
We consider the problem of reinforcement learning under safety requirements, in which an agent is trained to complete a given task, typically formalized as the maximization of a reward signal over time, while concurrently avoiding…
Reinforcement learning has emerged as a powerful paradigm for unlocking reasoning capabilities in language models. However, relying on sparse rewards makes this process highly sample-inefficient, as models must navigate vast search spaces…
Many practical applications of reinforcement learning require agents to learn from sparse and delayed rewards. It challenges the ability of agents to attribute their actions to future outcomes. In this paper, we consider the problem…
Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) algorithms often struggle to find strategies close to Pareto optimal Nash Equilibrium, owing largely to the lack of efficient exploration. The problem is exacerbated in sparse-reward settings,…
Reward machines are an established tool for dealing with reinforcement learning problems in which rewards are sparse and depend on complex sequences of actions. However, existing algorithms for learning reward machines assume an overly…
Reinforcement learning (RL) is a framework to optimize a control policy using rewards that are revealed by the system as a response to a control action. In its standard form, RL involves a single agent that uses its policy to accomplish a…
Reinforcement learning (RL) often struggles to accomplish a sparse-reward long-horizon task in a complex environment. Goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (GCRL) has been employed to tackle this difficult problem via a curriculum of…
Deep reinforcement learning is a technique for solving problems in a variety of environments, ranging from Atari video games to stock trading. This method leverages deep neural network models to make decisions based on observations of a…