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arXiv · 2509.19379

Learning from Observation: A Survey of Recent Advances

Returaj Burnwal·Hriday Mehta·Nirav Pravinbhai Bhatt·Balaraman Ravindran
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Abstract

Imitation Learning (IL) algorithms offer an efficient way to train an agent by mimicking an expert's behavior without requiring a reward function. IL algorithms often necessitate access to state and action information from expert demonstrations. Although expert actions can provide detailed guidance, requiring such action information may prove impractical for real-world applications where expert actions are difficult to obtain. To address this limitation, the concept of learning from observation (LfO) or state-only imitation learning (SOIL) has recently gained attention, wherein the imitator only has access to expert state visitation information. In this paper, we present a framework for LfO and use it to survey and classify existing LfO methods in terms of their trajectory construction, assumptions and algorithm's design choices. This survey also draws connections between several related fields like offline RL, model-based RL and hierarchical RL. Finally, we use our framework to identify open problems and suggest future research directions.

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Returaj Burnwal, Hriday Mehta, Nirav Pravinbhai Bhatt, Balaraman Ravindran. 2025-09-20. Learning from Observation: A Survey of Recent Advances. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19379

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