The goal of this paper is to propose and analyse a transfer learning meta-algorithm that allows the implementation of distinct methods using heuristics to accelerate a Reinforcement Learning procedure in one domain (the target) that are obtained from another (simpler) domain (the source domain). This meta-algorithm works in three stages: first, it uses a Reinforcement Learning step to learn a task on the source domain, storing the knowledge thus obtained in a case base; second, it does an unsupervised mapping of the source-domain actions to the target-domain actions; and, third, the case base obtained in the first stage is used as heuristics to speed up the learning process in the target domain.A set of empirical evaluations were conducted in two target domains: the 3D mountain car (using a learned case base from a 2D simulation) and stability learning for a humanoid robot in the Robocup 3D Soccer Simulator (that uses knowledge learned from the Acrobot domain). The results attest that our transfer learning algorithm outperforms recent heuristically-accelerated reinforcement learning and transfer learning algorithms.

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Abstract. This paper describes the design and implementation of robotic agents for the RoboCup Simulation 2D category that learns using a recently proposed Heuristic Reinforcement Learning algorithm, the Heuristically Accelerated Q-Learning (HAQL). This algorithm allows the use of heuristics to speed up the well-known Reinforcement Learning algorithm Q-Learning. A heuristic function that influences the choice of the actions characterizes the HAQL algorithm. A set of empirical evaluations was conducted in the RoboCup 2D Simulator, and experimental results show that even very simple heuristics enhances significantly the performance of the agents.

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