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Making Use of Unelaborated Advice to Improve Reinforcement Learning: A Mobile Robotics Approach

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Pattern Recognition and Data Mining (ICAPR 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 3686))

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Abstract

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is thought to be an appropriate paradigm for acquiring control policies in mobile robotics. However, in its standard formulation (tabula rasa) RL must explore and learn everything from scratch, which is neither realistic nor effective in real-world tasks. In this article we use a new strategy, called Supervised Reinforcement Learning (SRL), that allows the inclusion of external knowledge within this type of learning. We validate it by learning a wall-following behaviour and testing it on a Nomad 200 robot. We show that SRL is able to take advantage of multiple sources of knowledge and even from partially erroneous advice, features that allow a SRL agent to make use of a wide range of prior knowledge without the need for a complex or time-consuming elaboration.

This work was supported by Xunta de Galicia’s project PGIDIT04TIC206011PR. David L. Moreno’s research was supported by MECD grant FPU-AP2001-3350.

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Moreno, D.L., Regueiro, C.V., Iglesias, R., Barro, S. (2005). Making Use of Unelaborated Advice to Improve Reinforcement Learning: A Mobile Robotics Approach. In: Singh, S., Singh, M., Apte, C., Perner, P. (eds) Pattern Recognition and Data Mining. ICAPR 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3686. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11551188_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11551188_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-28757-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-28758-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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