[tnecniv]

I agree. Besides (PO)MDPs, the control people also get into neural networks whenever they come in vogue.

This thesis from 2000 was the first hit for "reinforcement learning control theory" from google: http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~anderson/res/rl/matt-diss.pdf

BTW, people in related fields may work on similar things but don't always publish at the same venue -- labels matter. For example, ICRA and RSS are some of the top robotics venues and people trying to sell themselves as roboticists will prefer to publish there.

EDIT: In the second paper, they learn the model only from the images, not from the game state, which is neat. That should be highlighted more than the one sentence it was given.