M-Learning: Heuristic Approach for Delayed Rewards in Reinforcement Learning

The current design of reinforcement learning methods requires extensive computational resources. Algorithms such as Deep Q-Network (DQN) have obtained outstanding results in advancing the field. However, the need to tune thousands of parameters and run millions of training episodes remains a significant challenge. This document proposes a comparative analysis between the Q-Learning algorithm, which laid the foundations for Deep Q-Learning, and our proposed method, termed M-Learning. The comparison is conducted using Markov Decision Processes with the delayed reward as a general test bench framework. Firstly, this document provides a full description of the main challenges related to implementing Q-Learning, particularly concerning its multiple parameters. Then, the foundations of our proposed heuristic are presented, including its formulation, and the algorithm is described in detail. The methodology used to compare both algorithms involved training them in the Frozen Lake environment. The experimental results, along with an analysis of the best solutions, demonstrate that our proposal requires fewer episodes and exhibits reduced variability in the outcomes. Specifically, M-Learning trains agents 30.7% faster in the deterministic environment and 61.66% faster in the stochastic environment. Additionally, it achieves greater consistency, reducing the standard deviation of scores by 58.37% and 49.75% in the deterministic and stochastic settings, respectively. The code will be made available in a GitHub repository upon this paper’s publication.