Pre-trained Word Embeddings for Goal-conditional Transfer Learning in Reinforcement Learning

ICML Workshop LaReL 2020 · Matthias Hutsebaut-Buysse, Kevin Mets, Steven Latré ·

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms typically start tabula rasa, without any prior knowledge of the environment, and without any prior skills. This however often leads to low sample efficiency, requiring a large amount of interaction with the environment. This is especially true in a lifelong learning setting, in which the agent needs to continually extend its capabilities. In this paper, we examine how a pre-trained task-independent language model can make a goal-conditional RL agent more sample efficient. We do this by facilitating transfer learning between different related tasks. We experimentally demonstrate our approach on a set of object navigation tasks.