Explorative learning of inverse models: A theoretical perspective

We investigate the role of redundancy for exploratory learning of inverse functions, where an agent learns to achieve goals by performing actions and observing outcomes. We present an analysis of linear redundancy and investigate goal-directed exploration approaches, which are empirically successful, but hardly theorized except negative results for special cases, and prove convergence to the optimal solution. We show that the learning curves of such processes are intrinsically low-dimensional and S-shaped, which explains previous empirical findings, and finally compare our results to non-linear domains.