Shaping has proven to be a powerful but precarious means of improving reinforcement learning performance. Ng, Harada, and Russell (1999) proposed the potential-based shaping algorithm for adding shaping rewards in a way that guarantees the learner will learn optimal behavior. In this note, we prove certain similarities between this shaping algorithm and the initialization step required for seve...

A lens system for shaping a laser beam profile has been designed, built, and tested. It consists of two plano-aspherical lenses which convert a Gaussian input beam into a uniform irradiance output beam. The optical design is based on solving differential equations expressing conservation of energy and constant optical path length condition as the beam passes through the system. Experimental res...

Human factors are among the main elements affecting the reliability of nondestructive examinations (NDE). In a man-machine system, human reliability is affected by many factors (performance shaping factors) whose influence on reliability cannot be easily expressed quantitatively. This paper identifies and ranks 59 perform-ance shaping factors by using a fuzzy reasoning method and proposes a pro...