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A basic assumption of traditional reinforcement learning is that the value of a reward does not change once it is received by an agent. The present work forgoes this assumption and considers the situation where the value of a reward decays…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-03-01 Taylor Dohmen , Ashutosh Trivedi

Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents often exhibit learning behaviors that are not intuitively interpretable by human observers, which can result in suboptimal feedback in collaborative teaching settings. Yet, how humans perceive and…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Bernhard Hilpert , Muhan Hou , Kim Baraka , Joost Broekens

We present a formalisation of finite Markov decision processes with rewards in the Isabelle theorem prover. We focus on the foundations required for dynamic programming and the use of reinforcement learning agents over such processes. In…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2021-12-14 Mark Chevallier , Jacques Fleuriot

The current thesis aims to explore the reinforcement learning field and build on existing methods to produce improved ones to tackle the problem of learning in high-dimensional and complex environments. It addresses such goals by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-26 Ayoub Ghriss , Masashi Sugiyama , Alessandro Lazaric

A recent goal in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework is to choose a sequence of actions or a policy to maximize the reward collected or minimize the regret incurred in a finite time horizon. For several RL problems in operation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-08-18 K J Prabuchandran , Tejas Bodas , Theja Tulabandhula

In some agent designs like inverse reinforcement learning an agent needs to learn its own reward function. Learning the reward function and optimising for it are typically two different processes, usually performed at different stages. We…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-04-29 Stuart Armstrong , Jan Leike , Laurent Orseau , Shane Legg

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-09-25 Tu-Hoa Pham , Giovanni De Magistris , Don Joven Agravante , Subhajit Chaudhury , Asim Munawar , Ryuki Tachibana

Effective decision-making in the real world depends on memory that is both stable and adaptive: environments change over time, and agents must retain relevant information over long horizons while also updating or overwriting outdated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-22 Oleg Shchendrigin , Egor Cherepanov , Alexey K. Kovalev , Aleksandr I. Panov

We consider the problem of imitation learning from a finite set of expert trajectories, without access to reinforcement signals. The classical approach of extracting the expert's reward function via inverse reinforcement learning, followed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-10 Ruohan Wang , Carlo Ciliberto , Pierluigi Amadori , Yiannis Demiris

Reinforcement learning agents learn from rewards, but humans can uniquely assign value to novel, abstract outcomes in a goal-dependent manner. However, this flexibility is cognitively costly, making learning less efficient. Here, we propose…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2025-09-11 Gaia Molinaro , Anne G. E. Collins

We extend the standard reinforcement learning framework to random time horizons. While the classical setting typically assumes finite and deterministic or infinite runtimes of trajectories, we argue that multiple real-world applications…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-15 Enric Ribera Borrell , Lorenz Richter , Christof Schütte

In reinforcement learning (RL), the goal is to obtain an optimal policy, for which the optimality criterion is fundamentally important. Two major optimality criteria are average and discounted rewards. While the latter is more popular, it…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-05 Vektor Dewanto , Marcus Gallagher

The last decade has seen an upswing in interest and adoption of reinforcement learning (RL) techniques, in large part due to its demonstrated capabilities at performing certain tasks at "super-human levels". This has incentivized the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-29 Pablo Samuel Castro

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a general framework concerned with an agent that seeks to maximize rewards in an environment. The learning typically happens through trial and error using explorative methods, such as epsilon-greedy. There are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-06 Per-Arne Andersen , Morten Goodwin , Ole-Christoffer Granmo

The standard feedback model of reinforcement learning requires revealing the reward of every visited state-action pair. However, in practice, it is often the case that such frequent feedback is not available. In this work, we take a first…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-08 Yonathan Efroni , Nadav Merlis , Shie Mannor

While learning in an unknown Markov Decision Process (MDP), an agent should trade off exploration to discover new information about the MDP, and exploitation of the current knowledge to maximize the reward. Although the agent will…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-16 Evrard Garcelon , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Alessandro Lazaric , Matteo Pirotta

We consider a problem of learning the reward and policy from expert examples under unknown dynamics. Our proposed method builds on the framework of generative adversarial networks and introduces the empowerment-regularized maximum-entropy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-26 Ahmed H. Qureshi , Byron Boots , Michael C. Yip

In this article, we aim to provide a literature review of different formulations and approaches to continual reinforcement learning (RL), also known as lifelong or non-stationary RL. We begin by discussing our perspective on why RL is a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-15 Khimya Khetarpal , Matthew Riemer , Irina Rish , Doina Precup

We consider the challenge of finding a deterministic policy for a Markov decision process that uniformly (in all states) maximizes one reward subject to a probabilistic constraint over a different reward. Existing solutions do not fully…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-21 Jaeyoung Lee , Sean Sedwards , Krzysztof Czarnecki

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