Inverse Transition Learning: Learning Dynamics from Demonstrations

Abstract

We consider the problem of estimating the transition dynamics $T^*$ from near-optimal expert trajectories in the context of offline model-based reinforcement learning. We develop a novel constraint-based method, Inverse Transition Learning, that treats the limited coverage of the expert trajectories as a \emph{feature}: we use the fact that the expert is near-optimal to inform our estimate of $T^*$. We integrate our constraints into a Bayesian approach. Across both synthetic environments and real healthcare scenarios like Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patient management in hypotension, we demonstrate not only significant improvements in decision-making, but that our posterior can inform when transfer will be successful.