Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mao, Yue, Liu, Shicheng, Xu, Siyuan, Zhu, Minghui
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.08131
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910202423410688
author Mao, Yue
Liu, Shicheng
Xu, Siyuan
Zhu, Minghui
author_facet Mao, Yue
Liu, Shicheng
Xu, Siyuan
Zhu, Minghui
contents Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) learns a reward function and a corresponding policy that best fit the demonstration data of an expert. However, in the current IRL setting, the learner is isolated from the expert and can only passively observe the expert demonstrations. This limits the applicability of IRL to interactive settings, where the learner actively interacts with the expert and needs to infer the expert's reward function from the interactions. To bridge the gap, this paper studies interactive IRL (IIRL) where a learner aims to learn the reward function of an expert and a policy to interact with the expert during its interactions with the expert. We formulate IIRL as a stochastic bi-level optimization problem where the lower level learns a reward function to explain the behaviors of the expert, and the upper level learns a policy to interact with the expert. We develop a double-loop algorithm, Bi-level Interactive Scenarios Inverse Reinforcement Learning (BISIRL), which solves the lower-level problem in the inner loop and the upper-level problem in the outer loop. We formally guarantee that BISIRL converges and validate our algorithm through extensive experiments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_08131
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Interactive Inverse Reinforcement Learning of Interaction Scenarios via Bi-level Optimization
Mao, Yue
Liu, Shicheng
Xu, Siyuan
Zhu, Minghui
Machine Learning
Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) learns a reward function and a corresponding policy that best fit the demonstration data of an expert. However, in the current IRL setting, the learner is isolated from the expert and can only passively observe the expert demonstrations. This limits the applicability of IRL to interactive settings, where the learner actively interacts with the expert and needs to infer the expert's reward function from the interactions. To bridge the gap, this paper studies interactive IRL (IIRL) where a learner aims to learn the reward function of an expert and a policy to interact with the expert during its interactions with the expert. We formulate IIRL as a stochastic bi-level optimization problem where the lower level learns a reward function to explain the behaviors of the expert, and the upper level learns a policy to interact with the expert. We develop a double-loop algorithm, Bi-level Interactive Scenarios Inverse Reinforcement Learning (BISIRL), which solves the lower-level problem in the inner loop and the upper-level problem in the outer loop. We formally guarantee that BISIRL converges and validate our algorithm through extensive experiments.
title Interactive Inverse Reinforcement Learning of Interaction Scenarios via Bi-level Optimization
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.08131