Recent Advances in Reinforcement Learning: 8th European Workshop, Ewrl 2008, Villeneuve D'ascq, France, June 30-july 3, 2008, Revised and Selected Papers - Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence

Marc Notes: International conference proceedings.; Includes bibliographical references and index.; Avail. in electronic form. Table of Contents: Lazy Planning under Uncertainty by Optimizing Decisions on an Ensemble of Incomplete Disturbance Trees / Boris Defourny, Damien Ernst, Louis Wehenkel -- Exploiting Additive Structure in Factored MDPs for Reinforcement Learning / Thomas Degris, Olivier Sigaud, Pierre-Henri Wuillemin -- Algorithms and Bounds for Rollout Sampling Approximate Policy Interation / Christos Dimitrakakis, Michail G. Lagoudakis -- Efficient Reinforcement Learning in Parameterized Models: Discrete Parameter Case / Kirill Dyagilev, Shie Mannor, Nahum Shimkin -- Regularized Fitted Q-Iteration: Application to Planning / Amir massoud Farahmand, Mohammad Ghavamzadeh, Csaba Szepesvari, Shie Mannor -- A Near Optimal Policy for Channel Allocation in Cognitive Radio / Sarah Filippi, Olivier Cappe, Fabrice Clerot, Eric Moulines -- Evaluation of Batch-Mode Reinforcement Learning Methods for Solving DEC-MDPs with Changing Action Sets / Thomas Gabel, Martin Riedmiller -- Bayesian Reward Filtering / Matthieu Geist, Olivier Pietquin, Gabriel Fricout -- Basis Expansion in Natural Actor Critic Methods / Sertan Girgin, Philippe Preux -- Reinforcement Learning with the Use of Costly Features / Robby Goetschalckx, Scott Sanner, Kurt Driessens -- Variable Metric Reinforcement Learning Methods Applied to the Noisy Mountain Car Problem / Verena Heidrich-Meisner, Christian Igel -- Optimistic Planning of Deterministic Systems / Jean-Francois Hren, Remi Munos -- Policy Iteration for Learning an Exercise Policy for American Options / Yuxi Li, Dale Schuurmans -- Tile Coding Based on Hyperplane Tiles / Daniele Loiacono, Pier Luca Lanzi -- Use of Reinforcement Learning in Two Real Applications / Jose D. Martin-Guerrero, Emilio Soria-Olivas, Marcelino Martinez-Sober, Antonio J. Serrrano-Lopez, Rafael Magdalena-Benedito, Juan Gomez-Sanchis -- Applications of Reinforcement Learning to Structured Prediction / Francis Maes, Ludovic Denoyer, Patrick Gallinari -- Policy Learning-A Unified Perspective with Applications in Robotics / Jan Peters, Jens Kober, Duy Nguyen-Tuong -- Probabilistic Inference for Fast Learning in Control / Carl Edward Rasmussen, Marc Peter Deisenroth -- United We Stand: Population Based Methods for Solving Unknown POMDPs / Noel Welsh, Jeremy Wyatt -- New Error Bounds for Approximations from Projected Linear Equations / Huizhen Yu, Dimitri P. Bertsekas -- Markov Decision Processes with Arbitrary Reward Processes / Jia Yuan Yu, Shie Mannor, Nahum Shimkin -- Author Index. Publisher Marketing: Inthesummerof2008, reinforcementlearningresearchersfromaroundtheworld gathered in the north of France for a week of talks and discussions on reinfor- ment learning, on how it could be made more e?cient, applied to a broader range of applications, and utilized at more abstract and symbolic levels. As a participant in this 8th European Workshop on Reinforcement Learning, I was struck by both the quality and quantity of the presentations. There were four full days of short talks, over 50 in all, far more than there have been at any p- vious meeting on reinforcement learning in Europe, or indeed, anywhere else in the world. There was an air of excitement as substantial progress was reported in many areas including Computer Go, robotics, and ?tted methods. Overall, the work reported seemed to me to be an excellent, broad, and representative sample of cutting-edge reinforcement learning research. Some of the best of it is collected and published in this volume. The workshopandthe paperscollectedhere provideevidence thatthe ?eldof reinforcement learning remains vigorous and varied. It is appropriate to re?ect on some of the reasons for this. One is that the ?eld remains focused on a pr- lem sequential decision making without prejudice as to solution methods. Another is the existence of a common terminology and body of theory."