Let it Cook: Learning to Wait in Sequential Decision Making
In sequential decision making, an agent typically observes its environment and acts at every timestep. However, such active participation may not always be necessary; tasks such as brewing coffee include periods that are served equally well by letting the environment evolve without constant monitoring and control. During such periods, the agent could simply wait to conserve its resources, or redirect its attention to another task. We capitalize on these opportunities by training a "waiting policy" that decides where and how long to wait. This involves forgoing sensing to commit to a wait action, representing a deliberate pause for a set number of timesteps. We formalize "learning to wait"...
| Authors | Christopher Watson, Arjun Krishna, Dinesh Jayaraman et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 11 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 11 August 2026 |
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