Neurocontrol by Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a model-free tuning and adaptation method for control of dynamic systems. Contrary to supervised learning, based usually on gradient descent techniques, RL does not require any model or sensitivity function of the process. Hence, RL can be applied to systems that are poorly understood, uncertain, nonlinear or for other reasons untractable with conventional methods. In reinforcement learning, the overall controller performance is evaluated by a scalar measure, called reinforcement. Depending on the type of the control task, reinforcement may represent an evaluation of the most recent control action or, more often, of an entire sequence of past control moves. In the latter case, the RL system learns how to predict the outcome of each individual control action. This prediction is then used to adjust the parameters of the controller. The mathematical background of RL is closely related to optimal control and dynamic programming. This paper gives a comprehensive overview of the RL methods and presents an application to the attitude control of a satellite. Some well known applications from the literature are reviewed as well.