Project Grant 2332476

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $300,000 Project Grant under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CFDA 47.070) program to Arizona State University (ASU) to develop active curriculum and environment design techniques for reinforcement learning (RL) systems. The 3-year project, starting on August 15, 2024, aims to enhance the performance of RL in complex real-world scenarios by optimizing resource allocation and reducing the need for extensive physical environment interactions. The key objectives include: 1) identifying auxiliary environments to facilitate learning in target environments (ACED-RL); 2) establishing scalable active task selection strategies to enable sequential training and knowledge transfer (Active Task Design for RL); 3) combining active task and environment design to generate RL curricula, including for multi-agent settings (Active Joint Task and Environment Design); and 4) evaluating the proposed approaches on benchmarks and high-impact applications like autonomous driving and robotic manipulation. No subawards are planned under this grant.