Abstract:
Transfer in reinforcement learning is based on the idea that it is possible to use what is learned in one task to improve the learning process in another task. For transfer between tasks which share transition dynamics but differ in reward function, successor features have been shown to be a useful representation which allows for efficient computation of action-value functions for previously-learned policies in new tasks. These functions induce policies in the new tasks, so an agent may not need to learn a new policy for each new task it encounters, especially if it is allowed some amount of suboptimality in those tasks. We present new bounds for the performance of optimal policies in a new task, as well as an approach to use these bounds to decide, when presented with a new task, whether to use cached policies or learn a new policy.
