arXiv — Machine Learning · · 3 min read

Finding the Time to Think: Learning Planning Budgets in Real-Time RL

Mirrored from arXiv — Machine Learning for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.

Computer Science > Machine Learning

arXiv:2606.26463 (cs)
[Submitted on 24 Jun 2026]

Title:Finding the Time to Think: Learning Planning Budgets in Real-Time RL

View a PDF of the paper titled Finding the Time to Think: Learning Planning Budgets in Real-Time RL, by Aneesh Muppidi and 4 other authors
View PDF HTML (experimental)
Abstract:Deliberating takes time. In real-time settings, that time is not free. Standard reinforcement learning (RL) sidesteps this as the environment waits indefinitely for the agent's decision. Instead, we study real-time RL environments where the environment progresses while waiting for the agent's action. Building on prior real-time formalizations, we introduce variable-delay real-time RL, where the agent chooses how long to deliberate at each decision point since the environment progresses. For the planning agents we use, the right delay is state-dependent, and naively planning how long to plan can paralyze the agent. We instead approach this setting by training a lightweight gating policy on top of a planner to select state-dependent planning budgets. Across real-time Pac-Man, Tetris, Snake, Speed Hex, and Speed Go, our gating policy outperforms fixed-budget and heuristic baselines, and transfers to a real-time setup where the environment and agent run on two different GPUs.
Subjects: Machine Learning (cs.LG)
Cite as: arXiv:2606.26463 [cs.LG]
  (or arXiv:2606.26463v1 [cs.LG] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.26463
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Aneesh Muppidi [view email]
[v1] Wed, 24 Jun 2026 23:55:15 UTC (366 KB)
Full-text links:

Access Paper:

Current browse context:

cs.LG
< prev   |   next >
Change to browse by:
cs

References & Citations

Loading...

BibTeX formatted citation

loading...
Data provided by:

Bookmark

BibSonomy Reddit
Bibliographic Tools

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data, Media

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos

Demos

Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Related Papers

Recommenders and Search Tools

Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
IArxiv recommender toggle
IArxiv Recommender (What is IArxiv?)
About arXivLabs

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

Discussion (0)

Sign in to join the discussion. Free account, 30 seconds — email code or GitHub.

Sign in →

No comments yet. Sign in and be the first to say something.

More from arXiv — Machine Learning