Basis function construction for hierarchical reinforcement learning

Much past work on solving Markov decision processes (MDPs) using reinforcement learning (RL) has relied on combining parameter estimation methods with hand-designed function approximation architectures for representing value functions. Recently, there has been growing interest in a broader framework that combines representation discovery and control learning, where value functions are approximated using a linear combination of task-dependent basis functions learned during the course of solving a particular MDP. This paper introduces an approach to automatic basis function construction for hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL). Our approach generalizes past work on basis construction to multi-level action hierarchies by forming a compressed representation of a semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) at multiple levels of temporal abstraction. The specific approach is based on hierarchical spectral analysis of graphs induced on an SMDP’s state space from sample trajectories. We present experimental results on benchmark SMDPs, showing significant speedups when compared to handdesigned approximation architectures.