MiniHack simplifies creation of complex RL environments.
problem Limited availability of challenging RL benchmarks.
method Develops a sandbox framework for easy RL environment design.
result MiniHack enables rapid creation of diverse RL testbeds.
NetHack Learning Environment (NLE) tests RL algorithms, offering scalable, complex, and challenging gameplay.
problem Challenging environments for testing RL algorithms.
method Procedurally generated, stochastic, rich, and complex NetHack environment.
result Demonstrates empirical success for early stages of NetHack using RL.
Survey of RL algorithms for dynamic environments.
problem Handling changing operating conditions in RL.
method Survey of algorithms developed for non-stationary environments.
result Methods to adapt to varying operating conditions.
Reinforcement learning (RL) methods learn optimal decisions in the presence of a stationary environment. However, the stationary assumption on the environment is very restrictive. In many real world problems like traffic signal control, robotic applications, one often encounters situations with non-stationary environme…
Equivariant CNNs improve RL performance in symmetric environments.
problem Learning equivariant representations for RL in symmetric environments.
method Proposed and studied equivariant CNNs for RL.
result Equivariant CNNs enhance RL performance and sample efficiency.
Evaluation of deep reinforcement learning (RL) is inherently challenging. In particular, learned policies are largely opaque, and hypotheses about the behavior of deep RL agents are difficult to test in black-box environments. Considerable effort has gone into addressing opacity, but almost no effort has been devoted t…
Neural Laplace Control tackles offline RL for continuous-time delayed systems with irregular observations.
problem Offline reinforcement learning problems involving continuous-time environments with delays and irregular observations.
method Combines a Neural Laplace dynamics model with a model predictive control (MPC) planner.
result Achieves near expert policy performance on continuous-time delayed environments.
CARL safely adapts RL agents for safety-critical tasks.
problem Safety hazards in RL for safety-critical tasks.
method CARL combines model-based RL and cautious adaptation.
result CARL achieves higher rewards with fewer failures in safety-critical tasks.
Surrogate models speed up RL training in dynamic systems.
problem High computational cost of high-fidelity simulations.
method Developed and tested surrogate models for RL training.
result Surrogate models can significantly accelerate RL training.
HySRL improves RL sample efficiency with shifted-dynamics data.
problem Leveraging historical data with shifted dynamics to improve sample efficiency in RL.
method HySRL, a hybrid transfer RL algorithm that uses prior information on dynamics shift to achieve better sample complexity.
result HySRL achieves problem-dependent sample complexity and outperforms pure online RL.
Proposes a method to improve few-shot transfer in off-dynamics RL.
problem Traditional RL struggles with transferring policies between environments with different dynamics.
method Introduces a penalty to regulate source-trained policies in target environments with limited data.
result Improves performance in various off-dynamics RL scenarios compared to existing methods.
Python module for RL trading in limit order books.
problem Training RL agents for algorithmic trading in limit order books.
method Model-based gym environments for reinforcement learning.
result Efficient RL training for trading problems.
Introduces Conditional Action Trees to simplify RL action spaces.
problem Challenges in RL with large, complex action spaces.
method Structures action spaces and reduces complexity through Conditional Action Trees.
result Demonstrates effectiveness in reducing action space and improving decision making.
Improves sample efficiency and generalization in vision-based RL by enhancing exploration.
problem Low sample efficiency in vision-based RL using images as observations.
method Integrates state representation learning to enhance exploration and sample diversity.
result Significant improvement in sample efficiency across various environments.
Develops HMRL for sparse reward RL problems, improving meta policy efficiency and transferability.
problem Difficulty in learning meta policies for sparse reward RL problems.
method Hyper-Meta RL framework with cross-environment meta state embedding and shaped meta reward.
result Improves meta policy generalization and efficiency for sparse reward RL problems.
When agents interact with a complex environment, they must form and maintain beliefs about the relevant aspects of that environment. We propose a way to efficiently train expressive generative models in complex environments. We show that a predictive algorithm with an expressive generative model can form stable belief-…
Simpler one-step distributional RL framework for control.
problem Lack of a unified theory for DistrRL in control.
method One-step distributional reinforcement learning (OS-DistrRL) framework.
result Unified theory for policy evaluation and control.
Inverse reinforcement learning has proved its ability to explain state-action trajectories of expert agents by recovering their underlying reward functions in increasingly challenging environments. Recent advances in adversarial learning have allowed extending inverse RL to applications with non-stationary environment …
Trading off exploration and exploitation in an unknown environment is key to maximising expected return during learning. A Bayes-optimal policy, which does so optimally, conditions its actions not only on the environment state but on the agent's uncertainty about the environment. Computing a Bayes-optimal policy is how…
We propose a novel approach to address one aspect of the non-stationarity problem in multi-agent reinforcement learning (RL), where the other agents may alter their policies due to environment changes during execution. This violates the Markov assumption that governs most single-agent RL methods and is one of the key c…
Improves deep RL agents' generalization to unseen environments.
problem Deep RL agents struggle to adapt to new environments.
method Information Bottleneck regularization and annealing-based optimization.
result Agents can generalize to test parameters more than 10 standard deviations away from training.
Two algorithms improve Federated RL in diverse environments.
problem Collaborative learning in environments with varying dynamics.
method Proposed two federated RL algorithms, QAvg and PAvg, and a personalization heuristic.
result Achieved better performance and generalization in diverse environments.
While current benchmark reinforcement learning (RL) tasks have been useful to drive progress in the field, they are in many ways poor substitutes for learning with real-world data. By testing increasingly complex RL algorithms on low-complexity simulation environments, we often end up with brittle RL policies that gene…
AACC improves RL performance in changing environments.
problem Deterioration of RL performance in real-world tasks.
method Formalizes CMDPs, proposes AACC for contextual RL.
result AACC outperforms baselines in various simulated environments.
Study shows tractable generalization in RL is impossible but possible with Strong Proximity.
problem RL agents struggle to generalize to new environments.
method Introduced Weak and Strong Proximity conditions to capture similarity between environments.
result Proved Strong Proximity is sufficient for efficient generalization.
New algorithm improves RL performance across different environments.
problem Improving reinforcement learning performance across various environments.
method Designing a fully model-free DRRL algorithm that learns from a single trajectory.
result Demonstrates superior robustness and sample efficiency compared to existing methods.
Agents struggle with solving tasks in new environments, but new models improve performance.
problem Rapid task-solving in novel environments.
method Developed EPNs to enable deep RL agents to plan over gathered knowledge.
result EPNs enable deep RL agents to excel at RTS, outperforming baselines by factors of 2-3.
Proposes PIC and POIC for measuring task difficulty in RL.
problem Lack of metrics to measure task difficulty in RL.
method Introduces policy information capacity (PIC) and policy-optimal information capacity (POIC) as metrics based on mutual information.
result Empirically shows PIC and POIC correlate with task solvability better than alternatives.
Tool converts industrial systems to RL environments for optimization.
problem Lack of RL methods for optimizing industrial systems.
method Develops a tool to convert FSM models to OpenAI Gym wrappers.
result Traditional RL methods can be applied to industrial systems.
HTMRL uses HTM for RL, adapting faster to changing environments.
problem Adapting to non-stationary environments in RL.
method Strictly HTM-based RL algorithm.
result HTMRL adapts faster to changing environments in a 10-armed bandit.
Fine-tuning RL with offline data reduces online interactions.
problem Optimizing RL with limited online interactions and offline data.
method Developed algorithm extsc{FTPedel} for MDPs with linear structure.
result Optimally reduces the number of online interactions needed.
We present NAVREN-RL, an approach to NAVigate an unmanned aerial vehicle in an indoor Real ENvironment via end-to-end reinforcement learning RL. A suitable reward function is designed keeping in mind the cost and weight constraints for micro drone with minimum number of sensing modalities. Collection of small number of…
RL tackles decision making in unknown environments, focusing on efficiency and efficacy.
problem Efficiency and efficacy in RL algorithms for sample-starved situations.
method Markov Decision Processes, model-based and value-based approaches, policy optimization.
result Enhanced understanding and improvements in sample and computational efficacies of RL algorithms.
We propose a general formulation for addressing reinforcement learning (RL) problems in settings with observational data. That is, we consider the problem of learning good policies solely from historical data in which unobserved factors (confounders) affect both observed actions and rewards. Our formulation allows us t…
New algorithms reduce dynamic regret in non-stationary RL environments.
problem Optimizing policies in environments that change over time.
method POWER and POWER++ algorithms for policy optimization with dynamic regret analysis.
result POWER++ improves dynamic regret by actively adapting to non-stationarity.
Latent-state environments with long horizons, such as those faced by recommender systems, pose significant challenges for reinforcement learning (RL). In this work, we identify and analyze several key hurdles for RL in such environments, including belief state error and small action advantage. We develop a general prin…
Agents learn social skills from each other, improving performance.
problem Independent RL agents fail to use social learning.
method Imposed constraints, model-based auxiliary loss, mixed training.
result Agents trained with social learning outperform solo-trained agents.
New RL method tackles sim-to-real gap using interactive data collection.
problem Sim-to-real gap in reinforcement learning.
method Distributionally robust reinforcement learning with interactive data collection.
result Proves sample-efficient learning is impossible without additional assumptions.
Several recent papers have examined generalization in reinforcement learning (RL), by proposing new environments or ways to add noise to existing environments, then benchmarking algorithms and model architectures on those environments. We discuss subtle conceptual properties of RL benchmarks that are not required in su…
RL policy tracks dynamic targets in partially known environments robustly.
problem Active target tracking in partially known environments.
method Deep reinforcement learning (RL) approach for in-sight tracking, navigation, and exploration.
result Unified RL policy shows robust behavior for agile and anomalous targets.
evo-RL combines evolutionary computation with reinforcement learning for better adaptability.
problem Improving reinforcement learning algorithms' adaptability and performance in environments with rewardless states.
method Embedding reinforcement learning in an evolutionary cycle, distinguishing instinctive from learnable behavior.
result evo-RL leads to state-of-the-art performance on OpenAI Gym control problems with rewardless states.
Offline RL policies should adapt to unknown aspects of the environment.
problem Uncertainty in offline RL datasets leads to suboptimal policies.
method Adaptive policies that consider all transitions seen so far, solving an implicit POMDP.
result Optimal adaptive policies improve offline RL performance.
A new buffer system improves continual learning in RL agents by adapting to changing environments.
problem Improving RL agents' ability to learn from changing environments over time.
method Multi-timescale replay buffer combined with invariant risk minimization.
result The method shows improvement over baselines in continual learning settings.
New method improves RL/IL agents' adaptability to unseen environments.
problem Current RL/IL techniques struggle with generalizing to unseen environments.
method Zero-shot compositional policy learning with multi-modal fusion and attention mechanism.
result Language grounding enhances generalization across varied environments.
Maximizes Rényi entropy for efficient exploration in reward-free RL.
problem Challenges of exploration in reward-free reinforcement learning.
method Maximizes Rényi entropy over state-action space in exploration phase; uses batch RL for planning phase.
result Effective and sample-efficient exploration leading to superior policies.
New RL algorithm explains why deep learning works in stochastic environments.
problem Why deep RL algorithms perform well in practice despite using random exploration.
method Introducing SQIRL, an iterative RL algorithm that separates exploration and learning.
result Effective horizon explains why deep RL works in stochastic environments.
New symmetries improve meta-reinforcement learning's generalization.
problem Black-box meta reinforcement learning struggles with generalization.
method Introduce symmetries to a black-box meta RL system.
result Incorporating symmetries improves generalization to new environments.
New approach handles stochastic and partially-observable environments using discrete autoencoders and Monte Carlo tree search.
problem Challenges in planning for stochastic and partially-observable environments.
method Uses discrete autoencoders and a stochastic variant of Monte Carlo tree search.
result Significantly outperforms MuZero on stochastic chess and scales to DeepMind Lab.