ARTFEED — Contemporary Art Intelligence

Terminal Representation: A New RL Abstraction Method

other · 2026-06-01

Researchers introduce the terminal representation (TR), a novel spatio-temporal abstraction for reinforcement learning. Unlike the successor representation (SR) and default representation (DR), TR encodes reward-weighted trajectories as a lower-dimensionality object and can be used directly for downstream tasks like option discovery, reward shaping, transfer learning, and exploration without eigenvector computations. The work is described in arXiv:2605.31289.

Key facts

  • arXiv:2605.31289 introduces the terminal representation (TR).
  • TR is a spatio-temporal abstraction for reinforcement learning.
  • TR encodes reward-weighted trajectories similarly to the default representation (DR).
  • TR can be learned as a lower-dimensionality object.
  • TR can be used directly for option discovery, reward shaping, transfer learning, and exploration.
  • TR does not require eigenvector computations.
  • The successor representation (SR) encodes states by future trajectories.
  • The default representation (DR) weights trajectories with reward.

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