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In policy gradient reinforcement learning, access to a differentiable model enables 1st-order gradient estimation that accelerates learning compared to relying solely on derivative-free 0th-order estimators. However, discontinuous dynamics…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Ku Onoda , Paavo Parmas , Manato Yaguchi , Yutaka Matsuo

This paper introduces a new approach to solve sensor management problems. Classically sensor management problems can be well formalized as Partially-Observed Markov Decision Processes (POMPD). The original approach developped here consists…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2009-03-20 Thomas Bréhard , Emmanuel Duflos , Philippe Vanheeghe , Pierre-Arnaud Coquelin

Policy-gradient methods are widely used in reinforcement learning, yet training often becomes unstable or slows down as learning progresses. We study this phenomenon through the noise-to-signal ratio (NSR) of a policy-gradient estimator,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-10 Haoyu Han , Heng Yang

We consider the problem of sequentially making decisions that are rewarded by "successes" and "failures" which can be predicted through an unknown relationship that depends on a partially controllable vector of attributes for each instance.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-09-18 Yingfei Wang , Chu Wang , Warren Powell

A method of a fusion of fuzzy inference and policy gradient reinforcement learning has been proposed that directly learns, as maximizes the expected value of the reward per episode, parameters in a policy function represented by fuzzy rules…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-09-07 Seiji Ishihara , Harukazu Igarashi

Policy gradient methods are very attractive in reinforcement learning due to their model-free nature and convergence guarantees. These methods, however, suffer from high variance in gradient estimation, resulting in poor sample efficiency.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-16 Sergey Pankov

This paper studies the performative policy learning problem, where agents adjust their features in response to a released policy to improve their potential outcomes, inducing an endogenous distribution shift. There has been growing interest…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Qianyi Chen , Ying Chen , Bo Li

In this work, we investigated the application of score-based gradient learning in discriminative and generative classification settings. Score function can be used to characterize data distribution as an alternative to density. It can be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-25 Yongchao Huang

Reinforcement learning (RL) with sparse and deceptive rewards is challenging because non-zero rewards are rarely obtained. Hence, the gradient calculated by the agent can be stochastic and without valid information. Recent studies that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-08 Guojian Wang , Faguo Wu , Xiao Zhang , Jianxiang Liu

Data augmentation policies drastically improve the performance of image recognition tasks, especially when the policies are optimized for the target data and tasks. In this paper, we propose to optimize image recognition models and data…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2020-06-16 Ryuichiro Hataya , Jan Zdenek , Kazuki Yoshizoe , Hideki Nakayama

We provide a new understanding of the stochastic gradient bandit algorithm by showing that it converges to a globally optimal policy almost surely using \emph{any} constant learning rate. This result demonstrates that the stochastic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-12 Jincheng Mei , Bo Dai , Alekh Agarwal , Sharan Vaswani , Anant Raj , Csaba Szepesvari , Dale Schuurmans

Policy Gradient (PG) algorithms are among the best candidates for the much-anticipated applications of reinforcement learning to real-world control tasks, such as robotics. However, the trial-and-error nature of these methods poses safety…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-20 Matteo Papini , Matteo Pirotta , Marcello Restelli

Empirical researchers and decision-makers spanning various domains frequently seek profound insights into the long-term impacts of interventions. While the significance of long-term outcomes is undeniable, an overemphasis on them may…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-17 Peng Wu , Ziyu Shen , Feng Xie , Zhongyao Wang , Chunchen Liu , Yan Zeng

In this work, we present a reinforcement learning algorithm that can find a variety of policies (novel policies) for a task that is given by a task reward function. Our method does this by creating a second reward function that recognizes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-03 Yunbo Zhang , Wenhao Yu , Greg Turk

Reinforcement learning is a promising approach to learning robotics controllers. It has recently been shown that algorithms based on finite-difference estimates of the policy gradient are competitive with algorithms based on the policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-12 Osbert Bastani

This paper proposes a novel model-based policy gradient algorithm for tracking dynamic targets using a mobile robot, equipped with an onboard sensor with limited field of view. The task is to obtain a continuous control policy for the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-05-18 Pengzhi Yang , Shumon Koga , Arash Asgharivaskasi , Nikolay Atanasov

We adapt the gradient sampling algorithm to the local scoring algorithm to solve complex estimation problems based on an optimization of an objective function. This overcomes non-differentiability and non-smoothness of the objective…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-05-30 Marc-Olivier Boldi , Valérie Chavez-Demoulin

Policy gradient methods ignore the potential value of adjusting environment variables: unobservable state features that are randomly determined by the environment in a physical setting, but are controllable in a simulator. This can lead to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-28 Supratik Paul , Michael A. Osborne , Shimon Whiteson

We study the problem of efficiently estimating policies that simultaneously optimize multiple objectives in reinforcement learning (RL). Given $n$ objectives (or tasks), we seek the optimal partition of these objectives into $k \ll n$…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Zhenshuo Zhang , Minxuan Duan , Youran Ye , Hongyang R. Zhang

Reinforcement learning offers the promise of automating the acquisition of complex behavioral skills. However, compared to commonly used and well-understood supervised learning methods, reinforcement learning algorithms can be brittle,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-01 Aviral Kumar , Xue Bin Peng , Sergey Levine