Reinforcement Learning

Also known as RL

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Overview

Reinforcement learning studies how an agent can choose actions over time to earn rewards, using experience to improve its decisions. Common approaches include value-based methods such as Q-learning, policy-gradient methods such as PPO, and model-based methods that learn or use a model of the environment; offline and hierarchical methods address learning from fixed data and long tasks. Applications range from Atari and MuJoCo benchmarks to robot control, traffic, games, and language-model agents that use tools or solve multi-step problems. A central challenge is making learning efficient and reliable when rewards are sparse or imperfect, environments change, and success in simulation or benchmarks may not transfer safely to deployment.

Latest papers

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1,743 papers237 papers in the last four weeks, up 46% on the four weeks before. 1.4% of all new papers.

  1. RE-SAC: Disentangling aleatoric and epistemic risks in bus fleet control: A stable and robust ensemble DRL approach

    Mar 19, 2026Yifan Zhang, Liang Zheng, Qifan ZhangUncertainty Estimation in RLReinforcement Learning

    Central South University

  2. Mathematical Foundations of Deep Learning

    Mar 19, 2026Xiaojing YeNeural Network Approximation TheoryGenerative Modeling

  3. PowerFlow: Unlocking the Dual Nature of LLMs via Principled Distribution Matching

    Mar 19, 2026Ruishuo Chen, Yu Chen, Zhuoran Li +1RL for Language ModelsReinforcement Learning

    Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

  4. Unified Policy Value Decomposition for Rapid Adaptation

    Mar 18, 2026Cristiano Capone, Luca Falorsi, Andrea Ciardiello +1Zero-Shot RLReinforcement Learning

    Computational Neuroscience Unit, Istituto Superiore di Sanit`a, 00161, Rome, Italy · Ospedale Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy · School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield,Sheffield,S10 2TN, United Kingdom

  5. CodeScout: An Effective Recipe for Reinforcement Learning of Code Search Agents

    Mar 18, 2026Lintang Sutawika, Aditya Bharat Soni, Bharath Sriraam R R +8Code LocalizationCode Search

    Carnegie Mellon University · Independent · OpenHands

  6. Complementary RL: Towards Efficient Experience-Driven Agent Learning

    Mar 18, 2026Dilxat Muhtar, Jiashun Liu, Wei Gao +8Reinforcement LearningSample-Efficient RL

    Alibaba Group · HKUST

  7. Identifying Latent Actions and Dynamics from Offline Data via Demonstrator Diversity

    Mar 18, 2026Felix SchurLatent Action LearningLatent Dynamics Modeling

    Department of Mathematics, ETH Zürich

  8. Per-Domain Generalizing Policies: On Learning Efficient and Robust Q-Value Functions (Extended Version with Technical Appendix)

    Mar 18, 2026Nicola J. Müller, Moritz Oster, Isabel Valera +2Generalization in RLQ-Learning

    German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Saarbrücken, Germany · Saarland University, Saarland Informatics Campus, Saarbrücken, Germany · Center for European Research in Trusted Artificial Intelligence (CERTAIN)

  9. SLEA-RL: Step-Level Experience Augmented Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Turn Agentic Training

    Mar 18, 2026Prince Zizhuang Wang, Shuli JiangRL for LLM AgentsAgentic RL

    Carnegie Mellon University

  10. ShuttleEnv: An Interactive Data-Driven RL Environment for Badminton Strategy Modeling

    Mar 18, 2026Ang Li, Xinyang Gong, Bozhou Chen +5Game-Playing AgentsReinforcement Learning

    School of Computer Science, Peking University · Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University

  11. Shielded Reinforcement Learning Under Dynamic Temporal Logic Constraints

    Mar 17, 2026Sadık Bera Yüksel, Ali Tevfik Buyukkocak, Derya AksarayConstrained RLReinforcement Learning

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University.

  12. REAL: Regression-Aware Reinforcement Learning for LLM-as-a-Judge

    Mar 17, 2026Yasi Zhang, Tianyu Chen, Mingyuan Zhou +3RL for Language ModelsReinforcement Learning

    University of California, Los Angeles · The University of Texas at Austin · Google Research

  13. When and Why Does Unsupervised RL Succeed in Mathematical Reasoning? A Manifold Envelopment Perspective

    Mar 17, 2026Zelin Zhang, Fei Cheng, Chenhui ChuUnsupervised RLReinforcement Learning

    Kyoto University

  14. From the Inside Out: Progressive Distribution Refinement for Confidence Calibration

    Mar 17, 2026Xizhong Yang, Yinan Xia, Huiming Wang +1Test-Time RLReinforcement Learning

    Southeast University · Kuaishou Technology · SUTD

  15. DyJR: Preserving Diversity in Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards via Dynamic Jensen-Shannon Replay

    Mar 17, 2026Long Li, Zhijian Zhou, Tianyi Wang +7Behavioral Diversity in RLReinforcement Learning

    Griffith University, Australia · Fudan University, China · Shanghai Innovation Institute, China +3

  16. Game-Theory-Assisted Reinforcement Learning for Border Defense: Early Termination based on Analytical Solutions

    Mar 16, 2026Goutam Das, Michael Dorothy, Kyle Volle +1Game-Theoretic RLReinforcement Learning

    School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Purdue University, 610 Purdue Mall, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA · Army Research Directorate, DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory, APG, MD 21005, USA · Munitions Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Eglin AFB, FL 32542, USA +1

  17. Counteractive RL: Rethinking Core Principles for Efficient and Scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 16, 2026Ezgi KorkmazReinforcement LearningSample-Efficient RL

  18. Regularized Latent Dynamics Prediction is a Strong Baseline For Behavioral Foundation Models

    Mar 16, 2026Pranaya Jajoo, Harshit Sikchi, Siddhant Agarwal +3Behavioral Foundation ModelsZero-Shot RL

    Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, Canada · Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) · The University of Texas at Austin +2

  19. S2Act: Simple Spiking Actor

    Mar 16, 2026Ugur Akcal, Seung Hyun Kim, Mikihisa Yuasa +6Spiking Neural NetworksRobotic RL

    Aerospace Engineering · Computer Science · Coordinated Science Laboratory +4

  20. Evaluating the Robustness of Reinforcement Learning based Adaptive Traffic Signal Control

    Mar 16, 2026Dickens Kwesiga, Angshuman Guin, Khaled Abdelghany +1Traffic Signal ControlReinforcement Learning

    Research Engineer, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA, 30332 · Principal Research Engineer, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA, 30332 · Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA, 75205 +1

  21. Writer-R1: Dynamic Rubric Mining for Reinforcement Learning of Open-Ended Writing

    Mar 16, 2026Jihao Zhao, Shuaishuai Zu, Zhiyuan Ji +2Memory-Augmented RLRL for Language Models

    School of Information, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China · School of Information, BRAIN, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

  22. ViSA: Visited-State Augmentation for Generalized Goal-Space Contrastive Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 16, 2026Issa Nakamura, Tomoya Yamanokuchi, Yuki Kadokawa +5Reinforcement LearningGoal-Conditioned RL

    I. Nakamura, T. Yamanokuchi, Y. Kadokawa, and T. Matsubara are with the Graduate School of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Nara, Japan. · J. Qu, S. Otsubo, Y. Susumu, S. Miwa are with the Advanced Technology R&D Center, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Hyogo, Japan.

  23. MorFiC: Fixing Value Miscalibration for Zero-Shot Quadruped Transfer

    Mar 15, 2026Prakhar Mishra, Amir Hossain Raj, Xuesu Xiao +1Cross-Embodiment Robot LearningRL for Legged Locomotion

    University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA · George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

  24. Chunk-Guided Q-Learning

    Mar 14, 2026Gwanwoo Song, Kwanyoung Park, Youngwoon LeeReinforcement LearningQ-Learning

    Department of Artificial Intelligence, Yonsei University · UC Berkeley

  25. Path-conditioned Reinforcement Learning-based Local Planning for Long-Range Navigation

    Mar 14, 2026Mateo Haro, Julia Richter, Fan Yang +2Robot NavigationRobot Motion Planning

    Robotic Systems Lab (RSL), ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

  26. Thermodynamics of Reinforcement Learning Curricula

    Mar 12, 2026Jacob Adamczyk, Juan Sebastian Rojas, Rahul V. KulkarniReinforcement LearningCurriculum RL

    Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA 02125, USA · Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CA

  27. IsoCompute Playbook: Optimally Scaling Sampling Compute for LLM RL

    Mar 12, 2026Zhoujun Cheng, Yutao Xie, Yuxiao Qu +12Reinforcement LearningRL Post-Training

    UC San Diego · MBZUAI-IFM · Carnegie Mellon University

  28. Automatic Generation of High-Performance RL Environments

    Mar 12, 2026Seth Karten, Rahul Dev Appapogu, Chi JinReinforcement Learning

    1Princeton University · 2Independent Researcher

  29. Taming the Adversary: A Cost-to-Disturbance Ratio Approach to Adversarial Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 12, 2026Taeho Lee, Donghwan LeeAdversarial MARLReinforcement Learning

    School of Electrical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea

  30. A Robust and Efficient Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Framework for Traffic Signal Control

    Mar 12, 2026Sheng-You Huang, Hsiao-Chuan Chang, Yen-Chi Chen +6Centralized Training with Decentralized ExecutionReinforcement Learning

    National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University · Academia Sinica · Kochi University of Technology +1