Introduction to Reinforcement Learning (Mar 2025)
Undergraduate course on RL, Jadavpur University, Information Technology (Online), 2024
Animals learn to select actions based on interaction with the environment around them. Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a field in learning theory, where we mimic animals using computer algorithms. Here, an RL agent takes an action based on the current environment and receives a reward. Through the reward, it estimates its optimal action to maximise rewards/increase chances of survival. This is a 54–hour comprehensive course (21 sessions, 2 hours each, and 3 Assignemnts, 4 hours each) that introduces students to the foundations of Reinforcement Learning. It is targeted at students who want to learn the foundations of AI – particularly Reinforcement Learning. This is tailored for all UG students in Engineering and Sciences. It would be particularly helpful for students who want to pursue - (i) a career in research in AI/RL/statistics (ii) Or apply for RL positions roles in the industry (a lot of robots like Boston Robotics use RL to design their robots). We also showed how to code several RL algorithms in Python from scratch.