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In this paper, we investigate preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL), which enables reinforcement learning (RL) agents to learn from human feedback. This is particularly valuable when defining a fine-grain reward function is not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Guojian Wang , Jianxiang Liu , Xinyuan Li , Faguo Wu , Xiao Zhang , Tianyuan Chen , Xuyang Chen

Preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) provides a natural way to align RL agents' behavior with human desired outcomes, but is often restrained by costly human feedback. To improve feedback efficiency, most existing PbRL methods…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-08 Xiao Hu , Jianxiong Li , Xianyuan Zhan , Qing-Shan Jia , Ya-Qin Zhang

Conveying complex objectives to reinforcement learning (RL) agents often requires meticulous reward engineering. Preference-based RL methods are able to learn a more flexible reward model based on human preferences by actively incorporating…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-26 Xinran Liang , Katherine Shu , Kimin Lee , Pieter Abbeel

Preference-based reinforcement learning (RL) provides a framework to train AI agents using human feedback through preferences over pairs of behaviors, enabling agents to learn desired behaviors when it is difficult to specify a numerical…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-03-21 David Chhan , Ellen Novoseller , Vernon J. Lawhern

Learning a reward function from human preferences is challenging as it typically requires having a high-fidelity simulator or using expensive and potentially unsafe actual physical rollouts in the environment. However, in many tasks the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-18 Daniel Shin , Daniel S. Brown , Anca D. Dragan

We consider the problem of preference based reinforcement learning (PbRL), where, unlike traditional reinforcement learning, an agent receives feedback only in terms of a 1 bit (0/1) preference over a trajectory pair instead of absolute…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-07 Aldo Pacchiano , Aadirupa Saha , Jonathan Lee

For AI systems to be useful to humans, they must understand and act in accordance with our values and preferences. Since specifying preferences is a hard task, inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) aims to develop methods that allow for…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Karim Abdel Sadek , Mark Bedaywi , Rhys Gould , Stuart Russell

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a popular paradigm for aligning models with human intent. Typically RLHF algorithms operate in two phases: first, use human preferences to learn a reward function and second,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-01 Joey Hejna , Rafael Rafailov , Harshit Sikchi , Chelsea Finn , Scott Niekum , W. Bradley Knox , Dorsa Sadigh

Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) is attractive in scenarios where reward engineering can be tedious. However, prior IRL algorithms use on-policy transitions, which require intensive sampling from the current policy for stable and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-24 Hana Hoshino , Kei Ota , Asako Kanezaki , Rio Yokota

Many imitation learning (IL) algorithms use inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) to infer a reward function that aligns with the demonstration. However, the inferred reward functions often fail to capture the underlying task objectives. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-01 Weichao Zhou , Wenchao Li

Preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) can help avoid sophisticated reward designs and align better with human intentions, showing great promise in various real-world applications. However, obtaining human feedback for preferences…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Yiqin Yang , Hao Hu , Yihuan Mao , Jin Zhang , Chengjie Wu , Yuhua Jiang , Xu Yang , Runpeng Xie , Yi Fan , Bo Liu , Yang Gao , Bo Xu , Chongjie Zhang

This study focuses on the topic of offline preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL), a variant of conventional reinforcement learning that dispenses with the need for online interaction or specification of reward functions. Instead,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-12 Yachen Kang , Diyuan Shi , Jinxin Liu , Li He , Donglin Wang

The complexity of designing reward functions has been a major obstacle to the wide application of deep reinforcement learning (RL) techniques. Describing an agent's desired behaviors and properties can be difficult, even for experts. A new…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-09 Wanqi Xue , Bo An , Shuicheng Yan , Zhongwen Xu

The aim of inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) is to infer an agent's preferences from observing their behaviour. Usually, preferences are modelled as a reward function, $R$, and behaviour is modelled as a policy, $\pi$. One of the central…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-17 Joar Skalse , Alessandro Abate

Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) describes the problem of learning an unknown reward function of a Markov Decision Process (MDP) from observed behavior of an agent. Since the agent's behavior originates in its policy and MDP policies…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-04-14 Michael Herman , Tobias Gindele , Jörg Wagner , Felix Schmitt , Wolfram Burgard

Offline imitation learning (offline IL) enables training effective policies without requiring explicit reward annotations. Recent approaches attempt to estimate rewards for unlabeled datasets using a small set of expert demonstrations.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-19 Shengjie Sun , Jiafei Lyu , Runze Liu , Mengbei Yan , Bo Liu , Deheng Ye , Xiu Li

Explicit engineering of reward functions for given environments has been a major hindrance to reinforcement learning methods. While Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) is a solution to recover reward functions from demonstrations only,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-24 David Venuto , Jhelum Chakravorty , Leonard Boussioux , Junhao Wang , Gavin McCracken , Doina Precup

We study the problem of inverse reinforcement learning (IRL), where the learning agent recovers a reward function using expert demonstrations. Most of the existing IRL techniques make the often unrealistic assumption that the agent has…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-20 Franck Djeumou , Murat Cubuktepe , Craig Lennon , Ufuk Topcu

For many reinforcement learning (RL) applications, specifying a reward is difficult. This paper considers an RL setting where the agent obtains information about the reward only by querying an expert that can, for example, evaluate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-01 David Lindner , Matteo Turchetta , Sebastian Tschiatschek , Kamil Ciosek , Andreas Krause

As AI systems become increasingly autonomous, aligning their decision-making to human preferences is essential. In domains like autonomous driving or robotics, it is impossible to write down the reward function representing these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-03 Ondrej Bajgar , Sid William Gould , Rohan Narayan Langford Mitta , Jonathon Liu , Oliver Newcombe , Jack Golden