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.
Reward shaping is one of the most effective methods to tackle the crucial yet challenging problem of credit assignment in Reinforcement Learning (RL). However, designing shaping functions usually requires much expert knowledge and hand-engineering, and the difficulties are further exacerbated given multiple similar tas…
HyperX uses reward bonuses to enable efficient exploration in meta-learning.
problem Catastrophic failure of meta-learning with sparse rewards.
method HyperX uses novel reward bonuses to explore in approximate hyper-state space.
result HyperX meta-learns better task-exploration and adapts more successfully to new tasks.
Novel meta-RL strategy improves efficiency in learning novel tasks.
problem Efficiency in learning novel tasks using deep RL.
method Decomposes meta-RL into task-exploration, task-inference, and task-fulfillment; uses deep networks and a task encoder.
result Improves sample efficiency and mitigates meta-overfitting.
This paper introduces a new reward shaping method for average-reward reinforcement learning.
problem Speeding up convergence to an optimal policy in average-reward reinforcement learning tasks.
method Developed a temporal logic-based approach to automatically generate reward shaping functions.
result The optimal policy can be recovered using the proposed reward shaping framework.
Action guidance helps agents learn true objectives in games with sparse rewards.
problem Training agents in games with sparse rewards requires significant exploration.
method Action guidance, a novel technique that combines exploration with reward shaping.
result Action guidance enables agents to optimize true objectives efficiently.
New star-shaped acceptability indexes generalize existing methods.
problem Generalizing existing acceptability measures.
method Characterizing acceptability indexes through star-shaped risk measures and sets.
result Introducing concrete examples linked to various financial measures.
This work simplifies IRL by using potential-based reward shaping.
problem Computational inefficiency in inverse reinforcement learning.
method Potential-based reward shaping to reduce RL sub-problems.
result Reduces computational burden of inverse reinforcement learning.
Meta-learning curiosity algorithms improves exploration across various tasks.
problem Generating curious behavior in reinforcement learning.
method Meta-learning approach to adapt reward signals dynamically.
result Two novel curiosity algorithms outperform human-designed ones.
Self-supervised reward prediction improves RL in sparse reward settings.
problem Data efficiency and sparse reward signals in reinforcement learning.
method Learning a state representation for reward prediction and using it to shape rewards.
result Self-supervised reward prediction enhances RL algorithms in single-goal environments.
Efficiently adapting to new environments and changes in dynamics is critical for agents to successfully operate in the real world. Reinforcement learning (RL) based approaches typically rely on external reward feedback for adaptation. However, in many scenarios this reward signal might not be readily available for the …
A new method shapes reinforcement learning environments by abstracting large state spaces.
problem Learning in large, noisy environments with sparse feedback.
method Environment shaping using state abstraction.
result Agent's policy in shaped environment preserves near-optimal behavior in original environment.
TLRS improves predictive power of mined formulaic alpha factors.
problem Sparse rewards in RL for mining formulaic alpha factors.
method Trajectory-level Reward Shaping (TLRS) with reward centering.
result TLRS boosts predictive power by 9.29% over existing methods.
A new reward shaping method balances learning efficiency and effectiveness for robot manipulation.
problem Efficient and effective learning in robot manipulations with system uncertainty.
method Dense2Sparse reward shaping method combining dense and sparse rewards.
result Dense2Sparse method achieves higher expected reward and better system uncertainty tolerance.
Recent reinforcement learning (RL) approaches have shown strong performance in complex domains such as Atari games, but are often highly sample inefficient. A common approach to reduce interaction time with the environment is to use reward shaping, which involves carefully designing reward functions that provide the ag…
Proposes a method to boost deep reinforcement learning with sparse rewards.
problem Challenges in learning complex behaviors with long horizons and sparse rewards.
method Predictive coding for reward shaping.
result Achieves better learning by providing reward signals that understand environment dynamics and emphasize useful features.
PixL2R maps natural language to pixel-based rewards for RL, improving sample efficiency.
problem Sparse reward settings in RL limit applicability to complex problems.
method Directly maps natural language descriptions to pixel-based rewards for guiding RL.
result Language-based rewards significantly improve sample efficiency in policy learning.
A language for specifying complex reinforcement learning tasks.
problem Challenges in specifying and shaping reward functions for complex reinforcement learning tasks.
method Proposes a new language and algorithm for automatically generating and shaping reward functions.
result SPECTRL tool outperforms state-of-the-art baselines.
Meta-learner infers subtask graph to adapt quickly to unknown tasks.
problem Adapting to unknown tasks with unknown subtask dependencies in few-shot RL.
method Meta-learner with Subtask Graph Inference (MSGI) and UCB-inspired intrinsic reward.
result Accurately infers latent task parameters and adapts more efficiently.
Meta-agent learns effective exploration from offline data.
problem Design a meta-agent to quickly maximize reward in unseen tasks.
method Bayesian RL approach with adaptive neural belief estimate.
result Meta-agent learns effective exploration behavior from diverse tasks.
This paper explores how environmental properties can simplify reinforcement learning in non-episodic settings.
problem Challenges in reinforcement learning with continuous interaction and sparse delayed rewards.
method Analysis of environment shaping and dynamism properties to simplify learning.
result Properties like environment shaping and dynamism can significantly ease learning in non-episodic, sparse reward settings.
This paper introduces Meta-Q-Learning (MQL), a new off-policy algorithm for meta-Reinforcement Learning (meta-RL). MQL builds upon three simple ideas. First, we show that Q-learning is competitive with state-of-the-art meta-RL algorithms if given access to a context variable that is a representation of the past traject…
SIBRE boosts reinforcement learning convergence by rewarding improvement over past performance.
problem Improving the rate of convergence in reinforcement learning.
method SIBRE is a reward shaping approach that rewards improvement over the agent's own past performance.
result SIBRE converges faster and more stably to the optimal policy compared to baseline RL algorithms.
WDAIL uses Wasserstein distance for more effective reward shaping in IL.
problem Fixed reward functions in GAIL limit performance on complex tasks.
method Introduces Wasserstein distance and PPO for improved reward shaping and stability.
result Significant performance improvement in complex MuJoCo tasks.
New approach to meta-learning with variational Bayes for unlabeled data.
problem Improving machine learning systems' adaptability to small data.
method Generative meta-learning using AEVB and mean-field variational Bayes.
result Relevant VB updates do not depend on generative neural networks for certain models.
Imitation learning allows agents to learn complex behaviors from demonstrations. However, learning a complex vision-based task may require an impractical number of demonstrations. Meta-imitation learning is a promising approach towards enabling agents to learn a new task from one or a few demonstrations by leveraging e…
We propose a new complexity measure for Markov decision processes (MDPs), the maximum expected hitting cost (MEHC). This measure tightens the closely related notion of diameter [JOA10] by accounting for the reward structure. We show that this parameter replaces diameter in the upper bound on the optimal value span of a…
MFMs enable efficient reward alignment for generative models.
problem Computational bottleneck in controlling generative models.
method Meta Flow Maps (MFMs) extend consistency models and flow maps to stochastic regime for efficient value function estimation.
result MFMs enable inference-time steering and unbiased, off-policy fine-tuning to general rewards efficiently.
Unified meta algorithms estimate various distribution functionals in infinite-armed bandits.
problem Estimating various distribution functionals in infinite-armed bandits.
method Unified meta algorithms for offline and online settings, achieving optimal sample complexities.
result Online estimation offers significant advantage for certain distribution functionals.
New method improves meta-reinforcement learning efficiency.
problem Sample inefficiency in meta-reinforcement learning.
method Hindsight Foresight Relabeling (HFR) method.
result HFR improves performance on various meta-reinforcement learning tasks.
New meta-learning approach for bandit policies that achieve high average reward.
problem Designing bandit policies that balance between worst-case and Bayesian assumptions.
method Differentiable parameterized policies optimized using policy gradients.
result Proposed algorithm achieves low regret and is practical for various bandit problems.
Reward shaping speeds up human learning through IRL.
problem Slow learning in humans, especially for challenging tasks.
method Extended IRL algorithm with kernel methods, conducted experiments with online game players.
result Players learn desired policies more quickly with reward shaping.
Modular meta-learning is a new framework that generalizes to unseen datasets by combining a small set of neural modules in different ways. In this work we propose abstract graph networks: using graphs as abstractions of a system's subparts without a fixed assignment of nodes to system subparts, for which we would need …
AMIGo uses adversarial intrinsic goals to teach RL agents new skills.
problem Learning in sparse reward environments.
method Adversarial intrinsic goals to generate a curriculum for a student policy.
result AMIGo enables agents to learn new skills without extrinsic rewards.
Typically, loss functions, regularization mechanisms and other important aspects of training parametric models are chosen heuristically from a limited set of options. In this paper, we take the first step towards automating this process, with the view of producing models which train faster and more robustly. Concretely…
Study on meta-reinforcement learning generalization in high-dimensional tasks.
problem Generalization performance of meta-reinforcement learning algorithms in high-dimensional tasks.
method High-dimensional, procedurally generated environments.
result Meta-reinforcement learning algorithms exhibit strong overfitting on challenging tasks.
Study tackles RLHF with diverse human feedback, showing limitations and proposing a meta-learning approach.
problem Traditional RLHF fails to balance diverse human preferences.
method Integrates meta-learning and multiple social welfare functions to optimize diverse preferences.
result Establishes sample complexity bounds for optimizing diverse social welfare functions.
Minimum attention improves reinforcement learning performance in high-dimensional dynamics.
problem Improving reinforcement learning performance in high-dimensional nonlinear dynamics.
method Applying minimum attention as a regularization technique in reinforcement learning, including model-based and model-free approaches.
result Minimum attention outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms in few-shot adaptation and variance reduction.
Deep reinforcement learning algorithms require large amounts of experience to learn an individual task. While in principle meta-reinforcement learning (meta-RL) algorithms enable agents to learn new skills from small amounts of experience, several major challenges preclude their practicality. Current methods rely heavi…
CCM improves context for Meta-RL by contrastive learning.
problem Improving context for Meta-RL to enable task generalization.
method CCM framework using contrastive learning for context encoding and information-gain-based trajectory collection.
result CCM outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms in benchmarks and sparse-reward environments.
Policy Gradient (PG) algorithms are among the best candidates for the much-anticipated applications of reinforcement learning to real-world control tasks, such as robotics. However, the trial-and-error nature of these methods poses safety issues whenever the learning process itself must be performed on a physical syste…
New meta-RL method avoids exploration-exploitation trade-off.
problem Learning to explore and exploit simultaneously in meta-RL.
method Developed new objectives for exploration and exploitation.
result DREAM outperforms existing methods on complex tasks.
Reinforcement learning requires manual specification of a reward function to learn a task. While in principle this reward function only needs to specify the task goal, in practice reinforcement learning can be very time-consuming or even infeasible unless the reward function is shaped so as to provide a smooth gradient…
We present a new deep meta reinforcement learner, which we call Deep Episodic Value Iteration (DEVI). DEVI uses a deep neural network to learn a similarity metric for a non-parametric model-based reinforcement learning algorithm. Our model is trained end-to-end via back-propagation. Despite being trained using the mode…
Meta-gradient D4PG optimizes performance and constraint adherence in RL.
problem Balancing performance and adherence to complex constraints in RL.
method Uses meta-gradients to find a balance between expected return and minimizing constraint violations.
result Meta-gradient D4PG consistently outperforms baselines across MuJoCo domains.
Meta-SAC automatically tunes SAC's entropy temperature for better exploration.
problem Exploration-exploitation dilemma in reinforcement learning.
method Meta-SAC uses metagradient and a novel meta objective to automatically adjust SAC's entropy temperature.
result Meta-SAC outperforms SAC-v2 by 10% on the humanoid-v2 task.
Study optimal reward schemes for inducing desired player performance in risky contests.
problem Designing optimal rewards to encourage desired performance levels in risky contests.
method Analyzed the optimal reward schemes for inducing average and specific rank performance.
result Optimal reward schemes can have surprising shapes, not just related to inequality.
We describe MELEE, a meta-learning algorithm for learning a good exploration policy in the interactive contextual bandit setting. Here, an algorithm must take actions based on contexts, and learn based only on a reward signal from the action taken, thereby generating an exploration/exploitation trade-off. MELEE address…