CS 277: Control and Reinforcement Learning

Winter 2021

Note: This course was previously offered as CS 295.

Course logistics

  • When: Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5–6:20pm
    • Lectures will be recorded and added to this playlist with access for uci.edu accounts.
  • Where: zoom
  • Announcements and forum: piazza
    • Important course announcements will be made on the forum.
    • Please post on the forum, publicly or privately, all course-related questions (no emails please).
  • Assignments: gradescope
    • Published on this page biweekly.
  • Instructor: Prof. Roy Fox
    • Office hours: calendly
    • Enrolled students are welcome to:
      • schedule 15-minute slots (more than once if needed);
      • give at least 4-hour notice;
      • attend individually or with friends.

Grading policy

  • Assignments: 88%
    • 4 best of 5 assignments count for 22% each.
    • No late submission.
  • Participation: 5%
  • Bonus: 7%

Schedule

(Week) Dates Tuesday Thursday
(1) Jan 5, 7 Introduction Imitation Learning
(2) Jan 12, 14 Temporal-Difference Methods Policy-Gradient Methods
(3) Jan 19, 21 Actor–Critic Methods Advanced Model-Free Methods
Assignment 1 due
(4) Jan 26, 28 Optimal Control Stochastic Optimal Control
Assignment 2 due
(5) Feb 2, 4 Planning Model-Based Methods
(6) Feb 9, 11 Partial Observability Partial-Observability Methods
(7) Feb 16, 18 Exploration (Feb 18)
Assignment 3 due
Review (Feb 23)
(8) Feb 23, 25 Inverse RL (recorded) Control as Inference
Assignment 4 due
(9) Mar 2, 4 Structured Control Multi-Task Learning
(10) Mar 9, 11 Multi-Agent RL Open Questions
Assignment 5 due

Assignments

Resources

Courses
Books
RL libraries
More resources

Further reading

Imitation Learning
Temporal-difference methods
Policy-gradient methods
Actor–critic methods
Model-based methods
Exploration
Inverse Reinforcement Learning
Control as Inference
Structured Control
Multi-Task Learning
Multi-Agent RL

Academic honesty

Don’t cheat. Academic honesty is a requirement for passing this class. Compromising the academic integrity of this course is subject to a failing grade. The work you submit must be your own. Academic dishonesty includes, among other things, copying answers from other students or online resources, allowing other students to copy your answers, communicating exam answers to other students during an exam, or attempting to use notes or other aids during an exam. If you do so, you will be in violation of the UCI Policy on Academic Honesty and the ICS Policy on Academic Honesty. It is your responsibility to read and understand these policies, in light of UCI’s definitions and examples of academic misconduct. Note that any instance of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Academic Integrity Administrative Office for disciplinary action, and may fail the course.