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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

We study reinforcement learning in settings where sampling an action from the policy must be done concurrently with the time evolution of the controlled system, such as when a robot must decide on the next action while still performing the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-28 Ted Xiao , Eric Jang , Dmitry Kalashnikov , Sergey Levine , Julian Ibarz , Karol Hausman , Alexander Herzog

Rewards serve as a measure of user satisfaction and act as a limiting factor in interactive recommender systems. In this research, we focus on the problem of learning to reward (LTR), which is fundamental to reinforcement learning. Previous…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-31 Jialin Liu , Xinyan Su , Zeyu He , Xiangyu Zhao , Jun Li

Empowerment is an information-theoretic method that can be used to intrinsically motivate learning agents. It attempts to maximize an agent's control over the environment by encouraging visiting states with a large number of reachable next…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-09 Felix Leibfried , Sergio Pascual-Diaz , Jordi Grau-Moya

Reinforcement learning algorithms in multi-agent systems deliver highly resilient and adaptable solutions for common problems in telecommunications,aerospace, and industrial robotics. However, achieving an optimal global goal remains a…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2021-05-18 Changgang Zheng , Shufan Yang , Juan Parra-Ullauri , Antonio Garcia-Dominguez , Nelly Bencomo

Reinforcement learning (RL) models have shown the capability of learning complex behaviors, but quantitatively assessing those behaviors - which is critical for safety assurance and the discovery of novel strategies - is challenging. By…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-23 William T. Redman

In reinforcement learning (RL), aligning agent behavior with specific objectives typically requires careful design of the reward function, which can be challenging when the desired objectives are complex. In this work, we propose an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-05 Yuting Tang , Yivan Zhang , Johannes Ackermann , Yu-Jie Zhang , Soichiro Nishimori , Masashi Sugiyama

Reinforcement learning (RL) relies heavily on exploration to learn from its environment and maximize observed rewards. Therefore, it is essential to design a reward function that guarantees optimal learning from the received experience.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-06-20 Ingy ElSayed-Aly , Lu Feng

Reinforcement learning (RL) often struggles in real-world tasks with high-dimensional state spaces and long horizons, where sparse or fixed rewards severely slow down exploration and cause agents to get trapped in local optima. This paper…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Hürkan Şahin , Van Huyen Dang , Erdi Sayar , Alper Yegenoglu , Erdal Kayacan

While reinforcement learning algorithms provide automated acquisition of optimal policies, practical application of such methods requires a number of design decisions, such as manually designing reward functions that not only define the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-29 Tim G. J. Rudner , Vitchyr H. Pong , Rowan McAllister , Yarin Gal , Sergey Levine

Statistical spoken dialogue systems have the attractive property of being able to be optimised from data via interactions with real users. However in the reinforcement learning paradigm the dialogue manager (agent) often requires…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-08-19 Pei-Hao Su , David Vandyke , Milica Gasic , Nikola Mrksic , Tsung-Hsien Wen , Steve Young

Learning and optimal control under robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) have received increasing attention, yet most existing theory, algorithms, and applications focus on finite-horizon or discounted models. Long-run average-reward…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-12 Shengbo Wang , Nian Si

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

The problem of reinforcement learning is considered where the environment or the model undergoes a change. An algorithm is proposed that an agent can apply in such a problem to achieve the optimal long-time discounted reward. The algorithm…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-04-25 Wuxia Chen , Taposh Banerjee , Jemin George , Carl Busart

A self-learning optimal control algorithm for episodic fixed-horizon manufacturing processes with time-discrete control actions is proposed and evaluated on a simulated deep drawing process. The control model is built during consecutive…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2020-01-07 Johannes Dornheim , Norbert Link , Peter Gumbsch

Reward design is a critical part of the application of reinforcement learning, the performance of which strongly depends on how well the reward signal frames the goal of the designer and how well the signal assesses progress in reaching…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-01 Yixiang Wang , Yujing Hu , Feng Wu , Yingfeng Chen

The reward signal plays a central role in defining the desired behaviors of agents in reinforcement learning (RL). Rewards collected from realistic environments could be perturbed, corrupted, or noisy due to an adversary, sensor error, or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-12 Xi Chen , Zhihui Zhu , Andrew Perrault

While recent progress in deep reinforcement learning has enabled robots to learn complex behaviors, tasks with long horizons and sparse rewards remain an ongoing challenge. In this work, we propose an effective reward shaping method through…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-04 Xingyu Lu , Stas Tiomkin , Pieter Abbeel

While reinforcement learning has shown experimental success in a number of applications, it is known to be sensitive to noise and perturbations in the parameters of the system, leading to high variance in the total reward amongst different…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-12-02 Erfaun Noorani , Christos Mavridis , John Baras

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms typically deal with maximizing the expected cumulative return (discounted or undiscounted, finite or infinite horizon). However, several crucial applications in the real world, such as drug discovery,…