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arXiv research

A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.

168,695 papers · 148 categories

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53107160213 · Jun 202019922001200920172026
48 results for sparse reward

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.

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.

Reinforcement learning usually uses the feedback rewards of environmental to train agents. But the rewards in the actual environment are sparse, and even some environments will not rewards. Most of the current methods are difficult to get good performance in sparse reward or non-reward environments. Although using shap…

2020-01-01abs ↗pdf ↗

Dealing with sparse rewards is a longstanding challenge in reinforcement learning. The recent use of hindsight methods have achieved success on a variety of sparse-reward tasks, but they fail on complex tasks such as stacking multiple blocks with a robot arm in simulation. Curiosity-driven exploration using the predict…

2019-06-09abs ↗pdf ↗

The paper tackles reward-relevance in offline RL with sparse decision dynamics.

problem Offline reinforcement learning with sparse decision dynamics and estimation sparsity.
method Reward-filtered least-squares policy evaluation using thresholded lasso.
result The method provides theoretical guarantees with sample complexity dependent on sparse component size.

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.

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.

Imitation learning is an effective alternative approach to learn a policy when the reward function is sparse. In this paper, we consider a challenging setting where an agent and an expert use different actions from each other. We assume that the agent has access to a sparse reward function and state-only expert observa…

2019-04-06abs ↗pdf ↗

ETGL-DDPG improves DDPG for sparse reward control with new exploration and replay techniques.

problem Sparse reward continuous control in reinforcement learning.
method Introduces εtεt-greedy search and GDRB framework for efficient exploration and reward use.
result ETGL-DDPG outperforms DDPG and other methods on sparse-reward continuous benchmarks.

A new EM framework for goal-conditioned RL improves performance on sparse reward tasks.

problem Handling sparse rewards in goal-conditioned reinforcement learning.
method A graphical model framework with an EM algorithm that includes a learning-in-hindsight E-step and a supervised M-step.
result hEM significantly outperforms model-free baselines on goal-conditioned benchmarks with sparse rewards.

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 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.

PlanGAN uses GANs to plan efficient trajectories for multi-goal tasks in sparse reward environments.

problem Learning with sparse rewards in multi-goal environments.
method PlanGAN combines GANs to generate trajectories leading to specified goals, then combines these into a planning algorithm.
result PlanGAN achieves comparable performance to model-free RL but is 4-8 times more sample efficient.

SAIL learns from sub-optimal demonstrations to improve sample efficiency in sparse reward tasks.

problem Reducing sample complexity in sparse-rewarded tasks.
method Self-Adaptive Imitation Learning (SAIL) that exploits sub-optimal demonstrations and efficient exploration.
result Significantly improved sample efficiency and better final performance across various tasks.

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…

2019-02-01abs ↗pdf ↗

We consider the problem of learning from sparse and underspecified rewards, where an agent receives a complex input, such as a natural language instruction, and needs to generate a complex response, such as an action sequence, while only receiving binary success-failure feedback. Such success-failure rewards are often …

2019-02-19abs ↗pdf ↗

The success of popular algorithms for deep reinforcement learning, such as policy-gradients and Q-learning, relies heavily on the availability of an informative reward signal at each timestep of the sequential decision-making process. When rewards are only sparsely available during an episode, or a rewarding feedback i…

2018-05-25abs ↗pdf ↗

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…

2018-02-28abs ↗pdf ↗

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.

Reinforcement Learning(RL) with sparse rewards is a major challenge. We propose \emph{Hindsight Trust Region Policy Optimization}(HTRPO), a new RL algorithm that extends the highly successful TRPO algorithm with \emph{hindsight} to tackle the challenge of sparse rewards. Hindsight refers to the algorithm's ability to l…

2019-07-29abs ↗pdf ↗

Successfully navigating a complex environment to obtain a desired outcome is a difficult task, that up to recently was believed to be capable only by humans. This perception has been broken down over time, especially with the introduction of deep reinforcement learning, which has greatly increased the difficulty of tas…

2019-10-21abs ↗pdf ↗

Align-RUDDER improves reinforcement learning with few demonstrations by redistributing rewards.

problem Learning complex tasks with sparse and delayed rewards using few demonstrations.
method Align-RUDDER uses a profile model for reward redistribution based on multiple sequence alignment of demonstrations.
result Align-RUDDER outperforms competitors on complex tasks with few demonstrations.

A framework helps reinforcement learning agents understand and decompose tasks from human demonstrations.

problem Sparse-reward tasks where demonstrations are used as sources of causal knowledge.
method Develops causal models through observation and reasons from this knowledge to decompose tasks.
result A basic implementation of Reasoning from Demonstration (RfD) is effective in sparse-reward tasks.

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…

2018-09-07abs ↗pdf ↗

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…

2019-04-21abs ↗pdf ↗

New conditions show proxy data can improve policy learning in sparse expert data contexts.

problem Improving sample complexity of policy learning with sparse expert data.
method Sufficient conditions for proxy data to improve sample complexity, adaptable to LLMs.
result Provable improvement in sample complexity for policy learning with proxy data.

This paper proposes a new algorithm for learning guidance rewards in RL.

problem Long-term temporal credit assignment in sparse or delayed reward environments.
method Surrogate RL objective with trajectory-space smoothing to learn guidance rewards.
result Guidance rewards can be learned without additional neural networks and have intuitive interpretation.

PRISM integrates diverse rewards in MORL, improving sample efficiency and Pareto coverage.

problem Heterogeneous MORL where dense objectives dominate, leading to poor sample efficiency.
method PRISM uses reflectional symmetry and ReSymNet to reconcile temporal-frequency mismatches and accelerate exploration.
result PRISM consistently outperforms sparse-reward baselines and oracles, achieving significant Pareto gains.

PopArt efficiently solves sparse linear bandits with tighter recovery guarantees.

problem Sparse linear bandits where rewards depend on a few covariates.
method PopArt: a simple, computationally efficient sparse linear estimation method.
result Improved regret bounds compared to state-of-the-art algorithms.

The paper explores a Multi-Objective RL approach for trading that generalizes reward functions.

problem Improving performance in single-asset trading through adaptive reward functions.
method Developed a Multi-Objective Deep Reinforcement Learning algorithm to generalize reward functions and discount factors.
result The Multi-Objective algorithm demonstrates increased predictive stability and better performance in sparse reward scenarios.