Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents require the specification of a reward signal for learning behaviours. However, introduction of corrupt or stochastic rewards can yield high variance in learning. Such corruption may be a direct result of goal misspecification, randomness in the reward signal, or correlation of the rew…
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48 results for “reward signal”
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.
Deep reinforcement learning has obtained significant breakthroughs in recent years. Most methods in deep-RL achieve good results via the maximization of the reward signal provided by the environment, typically in the form of discounted cumulative returns. Such reward signals represent the immediate feedback of a partic…
Paper proposes RRD to learn proxy rewards for sparse delayed rewards in episodic reinforcement learning.
problem Learning from sparse and delayed rewards in reinforcement learning.
method Randomized Return Decomposition (RRD) algorithm to redistribute rewards.
result Substantial improvement over baseline algorithms in experiments.
Paper introduces PRMs to learn non-Markovian stochastic rewards for reinforcement learning.
problem Lack of structured representation for non-Markovian stochastic rewards in reinforcement learning.
method Introduces probabilistic reward machines (PRMs) and presents an algorithm to learn them from decision processes.
result Algorithm proves correct and convergent for learning PRMs from decision processes.
Paper introduces a novel reward function for noisy financial markets using imitation learning.
problem Noisy reward function in financial markets hinders RL agent performance.
method Integrates imitation learning feedback with reinforcement learning to improve reward function design.
result Improves financial performance metrics compared to traditional benchmarks and RL agents.
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.
Solving tasks in Reinforcement Learning is no easy feat. As the goal of the agent is to maximize the accumulated reward, it often learns to exploit loopholes and misspecifications in the reward signal resulting in unwanted behavior. While constraints may solve this issue, there is no closed form solution for general co…
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.
Trade-R1 bridges verifiable rewards to stochastic financial markets via process-level reasoning verification.
problem Extending RL to financial markets where rewards are verifiable but noisy.
method A verification method that transforms reasoning over financial documents into a structured RAG task, using a triangular consistency metric.
result DSR achieves superior cross-market generalization while maintaining reasoning consistency.
A new learning method for prosthetic arms without explicit rewards.
problem Learning a prosthetic arm to interact with users without explicit reward signals.
method Interaction-Grounded Learning, observing multidimensional context and feedback vectors, discovering latent reward signal.
result The algorithm can discover a latent reward signal and ground its policies for successful interaction.
Recent advances in deep reinforcement learning algorithms have shown great potential and success for solving many challenging real-world problems, including Go game and robotic applications. Usually, these algorithms need a carefully designed reward function to guide training in each time step. However, in real world, …
Q-Learning overestimation bias influenced by learning rate, discount factor, and reward signal.
problem Overestimation bias in Q-Learning algorithm.
method Investigated the influence of learning rate, discount factor, and reward signal on Q-Learning's overestimation bias. Tuned parameters and used an exponential moving average of reward signal.
result Q-Learning can achieve more accurate value estimates by tuning parameters and using an exponential moving average of reward signal.
Paper shows RLHF can be solved similarly to standard RL.
problem Difficulty of RLHF compared to standard RL.
method Reduction to reward-based RL techniques.
result RLHF can be solved using existing algorithms for reward-based RL.
Deep learning has achieved remarkable successes in solving challenging reinforcement learning (RL) problems when dense reward function is provided. However, in sparse reward environment it still often suffers from the need to carefully shape reward function to guide policy optimization. This limits the applicability of…
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 states. Empowered learning has been shown to lead to complex behaviors, without …
Learning reward functions from data is a promising path towards achieving scalable Reinforcement Learning (RL) for robotics. However, a major challenge in training agents from learned reward models is that the agent can learn to exploit errors in the reward model to achieve high reward behaviors that do not correspond …
Exogenous state variables and rewards can slow down reinforcement learning by injecting uncontrolled variation into the reward signal. We formalize exogenous state variables and rewards and identify conditions under which an MDP with exogenous state can be decomposed into an exogenous Markov Reward Process involving on…
SEMI uses multisensory incongruity to self-supervise exploration in reinforcement learning.
problem Efficient exploration in reinforcement learning with sparse or missing rewards.
method SEMI incentivizes exploration by maximizing multisensory incongruity, measured in perception and action incongruity.
result SEMI improves sample efficiency and learns skills without external rewards.
The paper examines how updates to probabilistic models influence behavior based on evidence.
problem Understanding how updates to probabilistic models influence behavior based on evidence.
method Study of KL-regularized soft updates as Bayesian posterior updates within a single probabilistic model.
result Posterior updates determine relative incentives but not absolute rewards, which are ambiguous up to context-specific baselines.
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.
EBIL simplifies IL by estimating expert energy as reward, achieving effective performance.
problem Recovering optimal policy from expert demonstrations without reward signals.
method EBIL uses a two-stage solution: first estimating expert energy as reward, then learning policy.
result EBIL achieves effective performance and interpretable reward signals.
Exploration in sparse reward reinforcement learning remains an open challenge. Many state-of-the-art methods use intrinsic motivation to complement the sparse extrinsic reward signal, giving the agent more opportunities to receive feedback during exploration. Commonly these signals are added as bonus rewards, which res…
Reinforcement learning usually makes use of numerical rewards, which have nice properties but also come with drawbacks and difficulties. Using rewards on an ordinal scale (ordinal rewards) is an alternative to numerical rewards that has received more attention in recent years. In this paper, a general approach to adapt…
DOPL learns from preference feedback to solve RMAB problems.
problem Learning optimal decisions in RMAB with limited reward information.
method Direct online preference learning (DOPL) for Pref-RMAB.
result DOPL achieves sublinear regret for RMAB with preference feedback.
Paper introduces OTR for efficient offline RL in surgical robotics.
problem Lack of annotated datasets for offline RL in surgical robotics.
method OTR algorithm using Optimal Transport to assign rewards to unlabeled trajectories.
result OTR enables efficient policy learning from large datasets without handcrafted rewards.
Text generation is a crucial task in NLP. Recently, several adversarial generative models have been proposed to improve the exposure bias problem in text generation. Though these models gain great success, they still suffer from the problems of reward sparsity and mode collapse. In order to address these two problems, …
This work tackles the challenge of aligning generative models without explicit reward signals.
problem Aligning generative models without explicit reward signals.
method A Bilevel Optimization framework where the reward function is treated as the optimization variable of an outer-level problem.
result Theoretical analysis and insights generalize to tabular classification and model-based reinforcement learning.
The paper tackles reinforcement learning with exogenous variables and rewards.
problem Exogenous state variables and rewards slow reinforcement learning by introducing uncontrolled variation.
method Formalizes exogenous state variables and rewards, decomposes MDP into exogenous and endogenous components, and introduces algorithms to discover these components.
result Optimal policies for the endogenous MDP are also optimal for the original MDP, but the endogenous MDP is easier to solve due to reduced variance.
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.
Reinforcement learning algorithms struggle when the reward signal is very sparse. In these cases, naive random exploration methods essentially rely on a random walk to stumble onto a rewarding state. Recent works utilize intrinsic motivation to guide the exploration via generative models, predictive forward models, or …
Graph representation learning, aiming to learn low-dimensional representations which capture the geometric dependencies between nodes in the original graph, has gained increasing popularity in a variety of graph analysis tasks, including node classification and link prediction. Existing representation learning methods …
Reinforcement learning algorithms rely on carefully engineering environment rewards that are extrinsic to the agent. However, annotating each environment with hand-designed, dense rewards is not scalable, motivating the need for developing reward functions that are intrinsic to the agent. Curiosity is a type of intrins…
New algorithms for multivariate RL improve decision-making in complex systems.
problem Complex multi-objective decision-making in reinforcement learning.
method Oracle-free and computationally-tractable algorithms for multivariate distributional RL.
result Convergence rates match scalar reward settings and provide insights into reward dimensionality.
Extends linear MDP to handle nonlinear rewards.
problem Restrictive linear MDP assumption limits real-world applicability.
method Proposes Generalized Linear MDP (GLMDP) with GLMs for rewards.
result Develops offline RL algorithms achieving suboptimality guarantees.
We propose Scheduled Auxiliary Control (SAC-X), a new learning paradigm in the context of Reinforcement Learning (RL). SAC-X enables learning of complex behaviors - from scratch - in the presence of multiple sparse reward signals. To this end, the agent is equipped with a set of general auxiliary tasks, that it attempt…
New approach uses unlabeled prior data to accelerate exploration in sparse reward tasks.
problem Sparse reward tasks in reinforcement learning.
method Learn reward model from online experience, label prior data, and use concurrently.
result Rapid exploration in challenging sparse-reward domains.
Self-distillation improves constrained language generation by aligning models with target distributions.
problem Sparse and uninformative reward signals in constrained generation settings.
method Iteratively refining the base model through self-distillation, incorporating learned twist functions and proposals.
result Substantial gains in generation quality through improved model alignment with target distributions.
Sparse reward is one of the biggest challenges in reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper, we propose a novel method called Generative Exploration and Exploitation (GENE) to overcome sparse reward. GENE automatically generates start states to encourage the agent to explore the environment and to exploit received rew…
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…
Boosted GFlowNets improve exploration by sequentially training GFlowNets with residual rewards.
problem GFlowNets struggle to evenly explore reward landscapes, leading to poor coverage of high-reward areas.
method Sequential training of an ensemble of GFlowNets, each optimizing a residual reward.
result Boosted GFlowNets achieve better exploration and sample diversity on multimodal benchmarks and peptide design tasks.
BERT embeddings improve sequence quality metrics.
problem Measuring the quality of generated sequences against references.
method Employ contextual BERT embeddings for sequence-level reward.
result Contextual embeddings provide a more effective learning signal.
Contextual bandits are online learners that, given an input, select an arm and receive a reward for that arm. They use the reward as a learning signal and aim to maximize the total reward over the inputs. Contextual bandits are commonly used to solve recommendation or ranking problems. This paper considers a learning s…
A new reward learning module improves imitation learning in high-dimensional environments.
problem Challenges in high-dimensional environments for imitation learning.
method Generative model to generate intrinsic reward signals.
result Our method outperforms state-of-the-art IRL methods on Atari games.
We show that a critical vulnerability in adversarial imitation is the tendency of discriminator networks to learn spurious associations between visual features and expert labels. When the discriminator focuses on task-irrelevant features, it does not provide an informative reward signal, leading to poor task performanc…
Multi-user multi-armed bandits have emerged as a good model for uncoordinated spectrum access problems. In this paper we consider the scenario where users cannot communicate with each other. In addition, the environment may appear differently to different users, , the mean rewards as observed by different users…
A new reinforcement learning method uses mutual information to encourage agents to control their environment.
problem Learning from internal drives instead of external rewards.
method Formulate an intrinsic objective as mutual information between goal states and controllable states, derive a surrogate objective for efficient optimization.
result Demonstrated the efficacy of the approach in robotic tasks.
Proposes a new theoretical framework for PbRL that requires less human feedback.
problem Lack of theoretical work capturing practical PbRL frameworks.
method Introduces a reward-agnostic PbRL framework that acquires exploratory trajectories before human feedback.
result Demonstrates improved sample complexity for learning optimal policies in linear and low-rank MDPs.