Reinforcement Learning (RL) is an area of machine learning where an agent learns to make decisions by performing certain actions and observing the rewards or feedback from those actions. It’s distinct from other types of machine learning because it focuses on how an agent should take actions in an environment to maximize some notion of cumulative reward. RL is widely used in various fields such as robotics, gaming, healthcare, finance, and more, for tasks that require a sequence of decisions.

For example, in a gaming application, an RL agent learns to play and improve its game strategy by continually playing the game, making decisions, and improving based on the outcomes of these decisions.