# T3S: Improving Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning with Task-Specific Feature Selector and Scheduler

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.30765 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.30765/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Deep RL algorithms and representations, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods.
- Builds on 25 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Aug 2026.

## Placed in

- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [Deep RL algorithms and representations](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/deep-rl-algorithms-and-representations/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Gradient Surgery for Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06782/) (2020)
- [Soft Actor-Critic Algorithms and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05905/) (2018)
- [Meta-World: A Benchmark and Evaluation for Multi-Task and Meta Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10897/) (2019)
- [Dota 2 with Large Scale Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.06680/) (2019)
- [HyperNetworks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.09106/) (2016)
- [PackNet: Adding Multiple Tasks to a Single Network by Iterative Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.05769/) (2017)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Driving: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.00444/) (2020)
- [End-to-End Multi-Task Learning with Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10704/) (2018)
- [Cross-stitch Networks for Multi-task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.03539/) (2016)
- [Conflict-Averse Gradient Descent for Multi-task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14048/) (2021)
- [Policy Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06295/) (2015)
- [Multi-Task Learning with Deep Neural Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09796/) (2020)
- [PathNet: Evolution Channels Gradient Descent in Super Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.08734/) (2017)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning framework for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.02532/) (2017)
- [How to Train Your Robot with Deep Reinforcement Learning; Lessons We've Learned](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02915/) (2021)
- [Just Pick a Sign: Optimizing Deep Multitask Models with Gradient Sign Dropout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.06808/) (2020)
- [Actor-Mimic: Deep Multitask and Transfer Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06342/) (2015)
- [AdaShare: Learning What To Share For Efficient Deep Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.12423/) (2019)
- [Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning with Soft Modularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13661/) (2020)
- [Routing Networks: Adaptive Selection of Non-linear Functions for Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.01239/) (2017)
- [Continual Model-Based Reinforcement Learning with Hypernetworks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.11997/) (2020)
- [Recomposing the Reinforcement Learning Building Blocks with Hypernetworks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06842/) (2021)
- [Towards Effective Context for Meta-Reinforcement Learning: an Approach based on Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13891/) (2020)
- [An Efficient Transfer Learning Framework for Multiagent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08030/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multi-task reinforcement learning (MTRL) is a technique to train multiple tasks simultaneously, where previous works usually train a single model to solve different tasks by sharing parameters across various tasks. However, these methods are faced with inter-task interference since what parameters should be shared across tasks is not addressed, dramatically reducing learning efficiency. To solve these problems, we propose a novel MTRL framework called Task-Specific feature Selector and Scheduler (T3S), which consists of two components: a feature selector and a task scheduler. Specifically, the feature selectors employ hypernetworks to construct task-specific soft masks, which can be applied by globally shared representation to construct task-specific features. The task scheduler selects tasks for learning through two metrics, where the selection probability is inversely proportional to task progress (e.g., success rate) and task learning speed. Experimental results show that T3S consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art MTRL algorithms on various robotics manipulation tasks.