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Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL) enhances the scalability of decision-making in long-horizon tasks by introducing temporal abstraction through options-policies that span multiple timesteps. Despite its theoretical appeal, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-30 Hemanath Arumugam , Falong Fan , Bo Liu

In goal-conditioned hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL), a high-level policy specifies a subgoal for the low-level policy to reach. Effective HRL hinges on a suitable subgoal represen tation function, abstracting state space into…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-25 Vivienne Huiling Wang , Tinghuai Wang , Wenyan Yang , Joni-Kristian Kämäräinen , Joni Pajarinen

Hierarchical agents have the potential to solve sequential decision making tasks with greater sample efficiency than their non-hierarchical counterparts because hierarchical agents can break down tasks into sets of subtasks that only…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-09-05 Andrew Levy , George Konidaris , Robert Platt , Kate Saenko

We propose a novel hierarchical reinforcement learning framework for control with continuous state and action spaces. In our framework, the user specifies subgoal regions which are subsets of states; then, we (i) learn options that serve as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-26 Kishor Jothimurugan , Osbert Bastani , Rajeev Alur

Real-world tasks are often highly structured. Hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL) has attracted research interest as an approach for leveraging the hierarchical structure of a given task in reinforcement learning (RL). However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-08 Takayuki Osa , Voot Tangkaratt , Masashi Sugiyama

Safe and efficient assistive planning for visually impaired scenarios remains challenging, since existing methods struggle with multi-objective optimization, generalization, and interpretability. In response, this paper proposes a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-17 Yuting Zeng , Zhiwen Zheng , Jingya Wang , You Zhou , JiaLing Xiao , Yongbin Yu , Manping Fan , Bo Gong , Liyong Ren

We study combinatorial problems with real world applications such as machine scheduling, routing, and assignment. We propose a method that combines Reinforcement Learning (RL) and planning. This method can equally be applied to both the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-19 Joel Oren , Chana Ross , Maksym Lefarov , Felix Richter , Ayal Taitler , Zohar Feldman , Christian Daniel , Dotan Di Castro

Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning has been previously shown to speed up the convergence rate of RL planning algorithms as well as mitigate feature-based model misspecification (Mankowitz et. al. 2016a,b, Bacon 2015). To do so, it utilizes…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-10-11 Daniel J. Mankowitz , Aviv Tamar , Shie Mannor

Solving robotic navigation tasks via reinforcement learning (RL) is challenging due to their sparse reward and long decision horizon nature. However, in many navigation tasks, high-level (HL) task representations, like a rough floor plan,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-11-08 Jan Wöhlke , Felix Schmitt , Herke van Hoof

We study how to effectively leverage expert feedback to learn sequential decision-making policies. We focus on problems with sparse rewards and long time horizons, which typically pose significant challenges in reinforcement learning. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-12 Hoang M. Le , Nan Jiang , Alekh Agarwal , Miroslav Dudík , Yisong Yue , Hal Daumé

Sequential decision making, commonly formalized as Markov Decision Process (MDP) optimization, is a important challenge in artificial intelligence. Two key approaches to this problem are reinforcement learning (RL) and planning. This paper…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-01 Thomas M. Moerland , Joost Broekens , Aske Plaat , Catholijn M. Jonker

High-dimensional observations are a major challenge in the application of model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) to real-world environments. To handle high-dimensional sensory inputs, existing approaches use representation learning to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-15 Tung Nguyen , Rui Shu , Tuan Pham , Hung Bui , Stefano Ermon

In recent years, reinforcement learning has achieved many remarkable successes due to the growing adoption of deep learning techniques and the rapid growth in computing power. Nevertheless, it is well-known that flat reinforcement learning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-10-30 Le Pham Tuyen , Ngo Anh Vien , Abu Layek , TaeChoong Chung

In recent years, robots and autonomous systems have become increasingly integral to our daily lives, offering solutions to complex problems across various domains. Their application in search and rescue (SAR) operations, however, presents…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-09-23 Dimitrios Panagopoulos , Adolfo Perrusquia , Weisi Guo

Reinforcement learning (RL) techniques, while often powerful, can suffer from slow learning speeds, particularly in high dimensional spaces. Decomposition of tasks into a hierarchical structure holds the potential to significantly speed up…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-11-21 Behzad Ghazanfari , Fatemeh Afghah , Matthew E. Taylor

Reinforcement learning and symbolic planning have both been used to build intelligent autonomous agents. Reinforcement learning relies on learning from interactions with real world, which often requires an unfeasibly large amount of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-06-07 Fangkai Yang , Daoming Lyu , Bo Liu , Steven Gustafson

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has proven highly effective at enhancing the complex reasoning abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), yet underlying mechanisms driving this success remain largely opaque. Our analysis reveals that puzzling…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Haozhe Wang , Qixin Xu , Che Liu , Junhong Wu , Fangzhen Lin , Wenhu Chen

Goal-conditioned Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL) is a promising approach for scaling up reinforcement learning (RL) techniques. However, it often suffers from training inefficiency as the action space of the high-level, i.e., the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-23 Tianren Zhang , Shangqi Guo , Tian Tan , Xiaolin Hu , Feng Chen

In swarm robotics, confrontation scenarios, including strategic confrontations, require efficient decision-making that integrates discrete commands and continuous actions. Traditional task and motion planning methods separate…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-08-28 Qizhen Wu , Lei Chen , Kexin Liu , Jinhu Lu

We propose a new approach for solving planning problems with a hierarchical structure, fusing reinforcement learning and MPC planning. Our formulation tightly and elegantly couples the two planning paradigms. It leverages reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-17 Toshiaki Hori , Jonathan DeCastro , Deepak Gopinath , Avinash Balachandran , Guy Rosman