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Persistent rule-based interactive reinforcement learning

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Abstract

Interactive reinforcement learning has allowed speeding up the learning process in autonomous agents by including a human trainer providing extra information to the agent in real-time. Current interactive reinforcement learning research has been limited to real-time interactions that offer relevant user advice to the current state only. Additionally, the information provided by each interaction is not retained and instead discarded by the agent after a single-use. In this work, we propose a persistent rule-based interactive reinforcement learning approach, i.e., a method for retaining and reusing provided knowledge, allowing trainers to give general advice relevant to more than just the current state. Our experimental results show persistent advice substantially improves the performance of the agent while reducing the number of interactions required for the trainer. Moreover, rule-based advice shows similar performance impact as state-based advice, but with a substantially reduced interaction count.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been partially supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) and the RTP Fee-Offset Scholarship through Federation University Australia.

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Author notes

  1. Adam Bignold and Francisco Cruz have contributed equally to this manuscript.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, IT and Physical Sciences, Federation University, Ballarat, Australia

    Adam Bignold, Peter Vamplew & Cameron Foale

  2. School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia

    Francisco Cruz & Richard Dazeley

  3. Escuela de Ingeniería, Universidad Central de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Francisco Cruz

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  1. Adam Bignold
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  2. Francisco Cruz
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  3. Richard Dazeley
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  4. Peter Vamplew
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  5. Cameron Foale
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Correspondence to Francisco Cruz.

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Bignold, A., Cruz, F., Dazeley, R. et al. Persistent rule-based interactive reinforcement learning. Neural Comput & Applic 35, 23411–23428 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-021-06466-w

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