Enabling Option Learning in Sparse Rewards with Hindsight Experience Replay

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Romio, Gabriel, Melchiades, Mateus Begnini, da Silva, Bruno Castro, Ramos, Gabriel de Oliveira
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Romio, Gabriel
Melchiades, Mateus Begnini
da Silva, Bruno Castro
Ramos, Gabriel de Oliveira
author_facet Romio, Gabriel
Melchiades, Mateus Begnini
da Silva, Bruno Castro
Ramos, Gabriel de Oliveira
contents Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL) frameworks like Option-Critic (OC) and Multi-updates Option Critic (MOC) have introduced significant advancements in learning reusable options. However, these methods underperform in multi-goal environments with sparse rewards, where actions must be linked to temporally distant outcomes. To address this limitation, we first propose MOC-HER, which integrates the Hindsight Experience Replay (HER) mechanism into the MOC framework. By relabeling goals from achieved outcomes, MOC-HER can solve sparse reward environments that are intractable for the original MOC. However, this approach is insufficient for object manipulation tasks, where the reward depends on the object reaching the goal rather than on the agent's direct interaction. This makes it extremely difficult for HRL agents to discover how to interact with these objects. To overcome this issue, we introduce Dual Objectives Hindsight Experience Replay (2HER), a novel extension that creates two sets of virtual goals. In addition to relabeling goals based on the object's final state (standard HER), 2HER also generates goals from the agent's effector positions, rewarding the agent for both interacting with the object and completing the task. Experimental results in robotic manipulation environments show that MOC-2HER achieves success rates of up to 90%, compared to less than 11% for both MOC and MOC-HER. These results highlight the effectiveness of our dual objective relabeling strategy in sparse reward, multi-goal tasks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_13865
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enabling Option Learning in Sparse Rewards with Hindsight Experience Replay
Romio, Gabriel
Melchiades, Mateus Begnini
da Silva, Bruno Castro
Ramos, Gabriel de Oliveira
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Robotics
Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL) frameworks like Option-Critic (OC) and Multi-updates Option Critic (MOC) have introduced significant advancements in learning reusable options. However, these methods underperform in multi-goal environments with sparse rewards, where actions must be linked to temporally distant outcomes. To address this limitation, we first propose MOC-HER, which integrates the Hindsight Experience Replay (HER) mechanism into the MOC framework. By relabeling goals from achieved outcomes, MOC-HER can solve sparse reward environments that are intractable for the original MOC. However, this approach is insufficient for object manipulation tasks, where the reward depends on the object reaching the goal rather than on the agent's direct interaction. This makes it extremely difficult for HRL agents to discover how to interact with these objects. To overcome this issue, we introduce Dual Objectives Hindsight Experience Replay (2HER), a novel extension that creates two sets of virtual goals. In addition to relabeling goals based on the object's final state (standard HER), 2HER also generates goals from the agent's effector positions, rewarding the agent for both interacting with the object and completing the task. Experimental results in robotic manipulation environments show that MOC-2HER achieves success rates of up to 90%, compared to less than 11% for both MOC and MOC-HER. These results highlight the effectiveness of our dual objective relabeling strategy in sparse reward, multi-goal tasks.
title Enabling Option Learning in Sparse Rewards with Hindsight Experience Replay
topic Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13865