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Model-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a popular learning paradigm due to its potential sample efficiency compared to model-free RL. However, existing empirical model-based RL approaches lack the ability to explore. This work studies a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-16 Yuda Song , Wen Sun

Improving sample efficiency is central to Reinforcement Learning (RL), especially in environments where the rewards are sparse. Some recent approaches have proposed to specify reward functions as manually designed or learned reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-26 Shuai Han , Mehdi Dastani , Shihan Wang

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),…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-04 Jingkang Wang , Yang Liu , Bo Li

The aim of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in real-world applications is to create systems capable of making autonomous decisions by learning from their environment through trial and error. This paper emphasizes the importance of reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-31 Sinan Ibrahim , Mostafa Mostafa , Ali Jnadi , Hadi Salloum , Pavel Osinenko

In safety-critical applications of reinforcement learning such as healthcare and robotics, it is often desirable to optimize risk-sensitive objectives that account for tail outcomes rather than expected reward. We prove the first regret…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-12 O. Bastani , Y. J. Ma , E. Shen , W. Xu

This paper studies reward-agnostic exploration in reinforcement learning (RL) -- a scenario where the learner is unware of the reward functions during the exploration stage -- and designs an algorithm that improves over the state of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-24 Gen Li , Yuling Yan , Yuxin Chen , Jianqing Fan

We study the model-based undiscounted reinforcement learning for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). The oracle we consider is the optimal policy of the POMDP with a known environment in terms of the average reward over…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-19 Yi Xiong , Ningyuan Chen , Xuefeng Gao , Xiang Zhou

The design of materials structure for optimizing functional properties and potentially, the discovery of novel behaviors is a keystone problem in materials science. In many cases microstructural models underpinning materials functionality…

Materials Science · Physics 2022-02-23 Rama K. Vasudevan , Erick Orozco , Sergei V. Kalinin

This paper investigates the so-called reward-balancing methods, a novel class of algorithms for solving discounted-return reinforcement learning (RL) problems. These methods consist of iteratively adjusting the reward function to transform…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-23 Simone Baroncini , Bahman Gharesifard , Giuseppe Notarstefano

The expected regret of any reinforcement learning algorithm is lower bounded by $\Omega\left(\sqrt{DXAT}\right)$ for undiscounted returns, where $D$ is the diameter of the Markov decision process, $X$ the size of the state space, $A$ the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-10 Lucas Weber , Ana Bušić , Jiamin Zhu

A large variety of real-world Reinforcement Learning (RL) tasks is characterized by a complex and heterogeneous structure that makes end-to-end (or flat) approaches hardly applicable or even infeasible. Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-12 Gianluca Drappo , Alberto Maria Metelli , Marcello Restelli

State-of-the-art efficient model-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms typically act by iteratively solving empirical models, i.e., by performing \emph{full-planning} on Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) built by the gathered…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-11-01 Yonathan Efroni , Nadav Merlis , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Shie Mannor

We study the problem of guaranteeing low regret in repeated games against an opponent with unknown membership in one of several classes. We add the constraint that our algorithm is non-exploitable, in that the opponent lacks an incentive to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-07-05 Anthony DiGiovanni , Ambuj Tewari

Reward specification plays a central role in reinforcement learning (RL), guiding the agent's behavior. To express non-Markovian rewards, formalisms such as reward machines have been introduced to capture dependencies on histories. However,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Rajarshi Roy , Anirban Majumdar , Ritam Raha , David Parker , Marta Kwiatkowska

Preference-based Reinforcement Learning (PbRL) replaces reward values in traditional reinforcement learning by preferences to better elicit human opinion on the target objective, especially when numerical reward values are hard to design or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-27 Yichong Xu , Ruosong Wang , Lin F. Yang , Aarti Singh , Artur Dubrawski

We present an algorithm based on the \emph{Optimism in the Face of Uncertainty} (OFU) principle which is able to learn Reinforcement Learning (RL) modeled by Markov decision process (MDP) with finite state-action space efficiently. By…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-01 Zihan Zhang , Xiangyang Ji

In this paper, we propose a new solution to reward adaptation (RA) in reinforcement learning, where the agent adapts to a target reward function based on one or more existing source behaviors learned a priori under the same domain dynamics…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-23 Kevin Vora , Yu Zhang

Preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) is an approach that enables RL agents to learn from preference, which is particularly useful when formulating a reward function is challenging. Existing PbRL methods generally involve a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-30 Gaon An , Junhyeok Lee , Xingdong Zuo , Norio Kosaka , Kyung-Min Kim , Hyun Oh Song

Reinforcement learning (RL) systems can be complex and non-interpretable, making it challenging for non-AI experts to understand or intervene in their decisions. This is due in part to the sequential nature of RL in which actions are chosen…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-16 Amal Alabdulkarim , Madhuri Singh , Gennie Mansi , Kaely Hall , Upol Ehsan , Mark O. Riedl

We introduce Random Reward Perturbation (RRP), a novel exploration strategy for reinforcement learning (RL). Our theoretical analyses demonstrate that adding zero-mean noise to environmental rewards effectively enhances policy diversity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-11 Haozhe Ma , Guoji Fu , Zhengding Luo , Jiele Wu , Tze-Yun Leong