Automated Reinforcement Learning (AutoRL): A Survey and Open Problems

authored by

Jack Parker-Holder, Raghu Rajan, Xingyou Song, André Biedenkapp, Yingjie Miao, Theresa Eimer, Baohe Zhang, Vu Nguyen, Roberto Calandra, Aleksandra Faust, Frank Hutter, Marius Lindauer

Abstract

The combination of Reinforcement Learning (RL) with deep learning has led to a series of impressive feats, with many believing (deep) RL provides a path towards generally capable agents. However, the success of RL agents is often highly sensitive to design choices in the training process, which may require tedious and error-prone manual tuning. This makes it challenging to use RL for new problems, while also limits its full potential. In many other areas of machine learning, AutoML has shown it is possible to automate such design choices and has also yielded promising initial results when applied to RL. However, Automated Reinforcement Learning (AutoRL) involves not only standard applications of AutoML but also includes additional challenges unique to RL, that naturally produce a different set of methods. As such, AutoRL has been emerging as an important area of research in RL, providing promise in a variety of applications from RNA design to playing games such as Go. Given the diversity of methods and environments considered in RL, much of the research has been conducted in distinct subfields, ranging from meta-learning to evolution. In this survey we seek to unify the field of AutoRL, we provide a common taxonomy, discuss each area in detail and pose open problems which would be of interest to researchers going forward.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Information Processing
Machine Learning Section

External Organisation(s)

University of Oxford
University of Freiburg
Meta AI
Amazon Australia
Google Research
Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI)

Type

Article

Journal

Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research

No. of pages

47

ISSN

1076-9757

Publication date

11.01.2022

Publication status

E-pub ahead of print

Peer reviewed

Yes

Electronic version(s)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.03916 (Access: Open)